An Inquiry into the Good

This book was written during the years when I was teaching at the Fourth Higher School in Kanazawa. At first, my intention was to elaborate in fine detail especially that portion of this work concerning realityNote and to bring it before the world without delay; however, hindered by illness and various circumstances, I was unable to realize that aim. In the course of passing several years in this manner, my own thought underwent some change, and I gradually came to feel that what I aspired to accomplish could not easily be brought to completion. Thus, I came to think that I would like, for the present, to put this book forth into the world as it stands.

In the composition of this book, Parts II and III were completed first, while Parts I and IV were appended later in that order. Part I clarifies the nature of pure experienceNote, which forms the foundation of my thought, but those who are reading this work for the first time would do well to skip it. Part II sets forth my philosophical thought and may be called the core of this book. Part III is intended to discuss the GoodNote on the foundation of the ideas of the preceding part, though I believe it may also be regarded as an independent system of ethics without objection. Part IV sets forth my thoughts on religionNote, which I have long considered to be the culmination of philosophy. This part was written while I was ill and contains many imperfections; nevertheless, with it I have arrived at the conclusion of what I wished to say. The reason why I specifically entitled this book An Inquiry into the Good is that, despite philosophical investigations occupying its first half, I considered the problem of human life to be its center and its culmination.

The idea of seeking to explain everything by taking pure experienceNote as the sole realityNote was one I had entertained for a long time. At first, I read such authors as MachNote, but I was by no means satisfied. In time, through the insight that it is not that there is the individual and then experience, but rather that there is experience and then the individual—that experience is more fundamental than individual distinctions—I was able to extricate myself from solipsism; and by conceiving experience as active, I came to think that it might even be reconciled with the transcendental philosophy subsequent to FichteNote. It was thus that I ultimately wrote Part II of this book, though its imperfection goes without saying.

Mephistopheles may scoff that a fellow who speculates is like a beast on a verdant pasture fed on dry grass; yet, as a certain philosopher (HegelNote) remarked that he was condemned to contemplate philosophical truth, such anguish is perhaps inevitable for human beings once they have eaten of the forbidden fruit.

January 1911, in Kyoto

Nishida Kitarō

More than ten years have already passed since this book was first published, and it was written even many years prior to that. Since coming to Kyoto, having been able to devote myself exclusively to reading and contemplation, I have succeeded in refining and enriching my thought to some degree. Consequently, I came to feel dissatisfied with this work, to the point of intending to let it go out of print. Subsequently, however, requests for its publication arrived from various quarters; moreover, reflecting upon how many years it might yet take before I could set forth the entirety of my thought in a format akin to this book, I resolved once more to present it to the world. On the occasion of this new printing, Bungakushi Risaku Mutai and Bungakushi Toyosaku Sera undertook on my behalf the labor of textual corrections and proofreading, for which I can scarcely express the depth of my gratitude.

January 1921

Nishida Kitarō

As this book has gone through numerous reprintings, the type has in places lost its clarity, and the publishing house has now decided to set new plates for this edition. This book was the very first work in which I brought together my thoughts to any degree and presented them to the world; it represents nothing more than the reflections of my younger days. On this occasion, there are many points at which I should like to add revisions, yet thought is something that lived in its own time, and after an interval of several decades there is no longer any way to take up the brush to modify it. There is no other recourse than to leave this book as it stands.

Viewed from the perspective of today, the standpoint of this book is that of consciousness, and it may well be regarded as psychologistic. I cannot object if it is criticized as such. Yet even in the era when I wrote this book, what lay concealed in the innermost depths of my thought was, I believe, not merely that. In Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness, the standpoint of pure experienceNote advanced through FichteNote's standpoint of Tathandlung (act-fact) to the standpoint of absolute willNote; furthermore, in the second half of From the Acting to the Seeing, through the medium of Greek philosophy, it took a turn that led to the idea of basho (place). There, I believe, I found the point of departure for the logical formulation of my thought. The idea of basho was made concrete as the 'dialectical universal,' and the standpoint of the 'dialectical universal' was made immediate as the standpoint of 'actional intuition.' What in this book was called the world of direct experience or the world of pure experience, I have now come to conceive as the world of historical reality. The world of actional intuition, the world of poiesis, is truly the world of pure experience.

Fechner himself recounted that one morning, while resting on a bench in the Rosenthal in Leipzig and gazing upon a spring pasture where the sun shone brightly, flowers were fragrant, birds sang, and butterflies danced, he indulged in the 'daylight view' (Tagesansicht)—in which things as they are are true—in opposition to the colorless, soundless 'night view' of natural science. I do not know by what influence it came about, but from an early age I held the conviction that realityNote must be actuality just as it is, and that what is called the material world is nothing more than something conceived on its basis. Even now I recall how, while still a student at the higher school, walking the streets of Kanazawa, I would immerse myself in such thoughts as if dreaming. I believe the ideas of those days became the foundation of this book. When I composed this work, I could never have imagined that it would be read so widely and for so long by so many people, nor that I would survive this long to see its renewed edition. Toward this book, I cannot help but feel the sentiment of the ancient verse: To think that I have lived this long—over the mountain pass of Sayo no Nakayama.

October 1936

The Author

[Table of Contents omitted]

To experience means to know facts just as they are. It is to know in complete accordance with facts by relinquishing all personal contrivance. The designation 'pure' refers to the state of truly experiencing just as it is, without the addition of the slightest deliberate discrimination, since what is commonly called experience in truth mingles with some degree of thought. For example, it refers to the very instant of seeing a color or hearing a sound, prior not only to the thought that this is the operation of an external object or that 'I' am sensing it, but even before the judgment has intervened as to what this color or this sound is. Thus, pure experienceNote is identical with direct experience. When one directly experiences one's own state of consciousness, there is as yet neither subject nor object; knowledge and its object are completely unified. This is the purest form of experience. To be sure, commonly the meaning of the word 'experience' is not clearly defined; thinkers such as WundtNote designate even knowledge inferred on the basis of experience as 'indirect experience,' referring to physics and chemistry as sciences of indirect experience (WundtNote, Grundriss der Psychologie, Einl. §I). Yet not only can such knowledge not be called experience in the proper sense, but even among conscious phenomena, another person's consciousness cannot be experienced by oneself; and even within one's own consciousness, recollections of the past, or even the present moment once it is judged, are already no longer pure experience. True pure experienceNote possesses no meaning whatsoever; it is simply present consciousness of facts just as they are.

In the sense stated above, what manner of mental phenomena constitute the facts of pure experienceNote? No one would dispute that sensation and perception belong to it. Yet I believe that all mental phenomena appear in this form. In memory as well, past consciousness does not arise immediately, nor does one directly intuit the past; feeling something as 'past' is itself a present feeling. Even an abstract concept is by no means something transempirical, but is likewise a kind of present consciousness. Just as a geometrician imagines a single triangle and makes it representative of all triangles, what serves as the representative element of a concept is in the present moment nothing more than a kind of feeling (JamesNote, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, Chap. VII). Furthermore, if we include what is called the 'fringe' of consciousness among the facts of direct experience, even the consciousness of various relations among experiential facts enters entirely into this domain, just like sensations and perceptions (JamesNote, 'A World of Pure Experience'). What, then, of affective and volitional phenomena? It goes without saying that feelings of pleasure and displeasure are present consciousness; and in the case of the willNote as well, even if its purpose lies in the future, we always feel it as a present desire.

Now, let us consider somewhat the nature of this pure experience, which is direct to us and is the source of all mental phenomena. First, the question arises whether pure experience is simple or complex. Even in the case of immediate pure experience, from the viewpoint that it is constructed out of past experiences or that it can later be analyzed into simple elements, one might call it complex. Yet no matter how complex pure experience may be, in that very instant it is always a single, simple fact. Even if it is a reproduction of past consciousness, once it is unified within present consciousness, becomes an element of it, and acquires a new meaning, it can no longer be called identical with the past consciousness (Stout, Analytic Psychology, Vol. II, p. 45). Similarly, when one analyzes present consciousness, the analyzed elements are no longer identical with the present consciousness itself. From the standpoint of pure experience, everything is particular; in each instance, it is simple and original. Next, how far does the synthesis of such pure experience extend? The 'present' of pure experience is not an ideational present about which one might say that the moment one thinks of it, it is no longer present. The present as a fact of consciousness must possess a certain temporal duration (JamesNote, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, Chap. XV). That is, the focus of consciousness is always the present. Hence, the scope of pure experience naturally coincides with the scope of attention. Yet I believe that this scope is not necessarily confined beneath a single act of attention. We can shift our attention without interjecting the least thought, in a state wherein subject and object are undivided. For example, when one scrambles up a cliff with all one's might, or when a musician performs a piece thoroughly mastered, this may truly be called a 'perceptual train' (Stout, Manual of Psychology, p. 252). The instinctive actions of animals, too, must surely be accompanied by such a mental state. In these mental phenomena, perception maintains a strict unity and continuity; though consciousness shifts from one thing to another, attention is constantly directed toward the object, the prior act spontaneously eliciting the posterior, without the slightest fissure into which thinkingNote could enter. Comparing this with momentary perception, though there may be a shift of attention and differences in temporal duration, in terms of immediacy and the union of subject and object there is not the slightest difference. In particular, if what is called momentary perception is in fact something compounded and constructed out of complex experiences, we must say that the distinction between the two is not a difference in quality, but merely a difference in degree. Pure experience is by no means limited to a single sensation. A 'simple sensation' in the strict sense spoken of by psychologists is merely a hypothetical postulate resulting from scientific analysis; it is not a concrete experience that is directly actual.

The reason why pure experience is direct and pure does not lie in its being simple, unanalyzable, or momentary; rather, it lies in the strict unity of concrete consciousness. Consciousness is by no means formed through the aggregation of simple mental elements, as psychologists speak of; originally, it constitutes an integrated system. The consciousness of a newborn infant is likely a chaotic unity in which even the distinction between light and dark is not clear. Out of this, diverse states of consciousness differentiate and develop. Yet no matter how finely differentiated it becomes, it never loses the form of its fundamental system. Concrete consciousness direct to us always appears in this form. Even something like momentary perception never violates this form. For instance, even when one imagines perceiving the whole of an object at a single glance, upon close examination attention naturally shifts along with the movements of the eye, whereby one comes to know the whole. Thus, consciousness in its original nature is a systematic development; and as long as this unity is strict and consciousness develops of itself, we do not lose the standpoint of pure experience. This point is identical in perceptual experience and representational experience alike. When a system of representations develops of itself, the whole is immediately pure experience. That GoetheNote composed poetry intuitively in a dream is an example of this. It might perhaps seem that in perceptual experience, because attention is governed by external objects, it cannot be called a unity of consciousness. Nevertheless, behind perceptual activity as well, an unconscious unifying powerNote must still be at work; attention is guided by this. Conversely, it might seem that representational experience, no matter how unified, necessarily belongs to subjective contrivance and cannot be called pure experience. Yet even in representational experience, when its unity is necessary and connects spontaneously, we must regard it as pure experience; when there is nothing from without to disrupt the unity, as in dreams, it is entirely confounded with perceptual experience. Originally, there is no distinction between inner and outer in experience; what makes it pure lies in its unity, not in its kind. Even a representation, when strictly united with sensation, is immediately a single experience. It is only when it detaches from the present unity and enters into relation with another consciousness that it is no longer present experience, but becomes meaning. Moreover, when it is representation alone, as in dreams, it is completely confounded with perception. Sensation is always thought to be experience probably because it constantly serves as the focus of attention and the center of unity.

I should like now to define the meaning of the unity of consciousness in somewhat greater detail and to clarify the nature of pure experience. A system of consciousness, like any organic entity, is one in which a unifying factor orderly differentiates and develops to realize the whole. In consciousness, as soon as one aspect of it appears, the unifying activity accompanies it as a feeling of tendency. What directs our attention is this very activity; when the unity is strict or unhindered from without, this activity is unconscious, but when it is not, it emerges upon consciousness separately as a representation, straightway departing from the state of pure experience. That is to say, as long as the unifying activity is operating, the whole is actuality and pure experience. Furthermore, consciousness is entirely impulsive; if, as voluntarism maintains, we can say that willNote is the fundamental form of consciousness, then the form of conscious development is, in the broad sense, the form of the development of the will, and its unifying tendency must be called the purpose of the will. Pure experience is the state in which there is not the slightest fissure between the demand of the will and its realization, its freest and most vigorous state. To be sure, viewed from the vantage of the elective will, being governed by the impulsive will in this manner might appear as a constraint upon the will; yet elective will is already a state in which the will has lost its freedom, and hence, when disciplined, it becomes impulsive once again. The essence of the will does not lie in a state of desiring for the future, but in the present activity of the present. Originally, the bodily movement accompanying the will is not an element of the will. Viewed purely psychologically, the will is an inner apperception of consciousness. There is no special phenomenon called the will separate from this unifying activity; the culmination of this unifying activity is the will. ThinkingNote, like the will, is also a kind of apperception, but its unity is merely subjective. The will, on the contrary, is the unity of subject and object. It is for this reason that the will is always present (SchopenhauerNote, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, §54). Pure experience is the immediate intuition of facts just as they are, and it is said to have no meaning. Stated thus, it might be thought that pure experience is somehow a chaotic and undifferentiated state; however, various meanings and judgments arise from the differentiation of experience itself—the former are not bestowed upon the latter from without; experience must inherently possess differentiated aspects within itself. For instance, judging upon seeing a color that it is 'blue' does not render the primordial color sensation distinct; it merely connects it with similar sensations experienced in the past. Furthermore, even if I point to an experience appearing as a visual perception and call it a 'desk,' rendering various judgments concerning it, this does not add the slightest richness to the content of this experience itself. In short, the meaning of an experience or a judgment merely indicates relations with other things; it does not enrich the content of the experience itself. What appears in meaning or judgment is a part abstracted from the primordial experience, and in its content it is actually poorer than the latter. Of course, when recalling a primordial experience, something previously unconscious may subsequently become conscious; yet this is merely that attention has been directed to a part not previously attended to, and it is not that something previously nonexistent has been added through meaning or judgment.

If pure experience thus inherently possesses differentiated aspects, what then are the meanings or judgments added to it, and what is their relationship with pure experience? Commonly, it is said that when pure experience is connected to objective realityNote, it generates meaning and assumes the form of judgment. Yet viewed from the standpoint of the theory of pure experience, we cannot step outside the sphere of pure experience. The generation of meaning or judgment arises, after all, from connecting present consciousness with past consciousness. That is, it is based upon a unifying activity that unifies it within a larger system of consciousness. What are called meanings or judgments merely indicate the relations between present consciousness and other things; that is, they simply express the location of present consciousness within a system of consciousness. For example, when one judges a certain auditory sensation to be the sound of a bell, one has merely determined its location within past experience. Therefore, whatever consciousness there may be, as long as it is in a state of strict unity, it is always pure experience—that is, simply a fact. Conversely, when this unity is disrupted, that is, when it enters into relation with other things, meaning arises and judgment arises. Toward the pure experience appearing directly before us, past consciousness straightway comes into operation; it connects with one part of present consciousness and clashes with another part, whereupon the state of pure experience comes to be analyzed and broken down. Meanings and judgments are precisely this state of disunity. Yet when we consider this carefully, unity and disunity are after all a matter of degree; there is neither a consciousness completely unified nor one completely disunified. All consciousness is a systematic development. Just as even momentary knowledge implicitly contains various oppositions and transitions, behind the consciousness of relations such as meaning and judgment there must be a unifying consciousness that establishes this relation. As Wundt said, every judgment arises through the analysis of a complex representation (Wundt, Logik, Bd. I, Abs. III, Kap. 1). Furthermore, when judgment is gradually trained and its unity becomes strict, it assumes completely the form of pure experience; for instance, when learning an art, what was conscious at first becomes unconscious as one masters it. Advancing one step further in our reflection, pure experience and its meaning or judgment represent two aspects of consciousness—that is, they are merely differences in perspective upon the identical thing. While consciousness possesses unity on the one hand, it must also have an aspect of differentiation and development on the other. Moreover, as James explained in 'the stream of consciousness,' consciousness does not cling only to where it appears, but implicatively bears relations with other things. The present can always be viewed as part of a larger system. What is called differentiation and development is the operation of an even greater unity.

If meaning is thus also the operation of a greater unity, does pure experience in such cases transcend its own bounds? For instance, when it relates to the past in memory and to the future in the will, can pure experience be thought to transcend the present? Psychologists state that consciousness is not a thing but an event, and hence is renewed from moment to moment, such that identical consciousness never recurs. Yet I believe that such a view is not reached from the standpoint of pure experience, but is rather an inference drawn from the temporal property that the past never returns and the future has not yet arrived. From the standpoint of pure experience, a consciousness possessing identical content must through and through be regarded as identical consciousness. Just as, when a single purposive representation operates continuously in thinking or willing, we must regard it as one, so too, even if its unifying activity is interrupted in time, I believe we must consider it as one and the same.

Viewed from the perspective of psychology, thinkingNote is the activity of determining and unifying the relations among representations. Its simplest form is the judgment, which determines the relation between two representations and combines them. In a judgment, however, we do not combine two independent representations; rather, we analyze a single, complete representation. For instance, the judgment 'the horse runs' arises from analyzing the single representation of 'a running horse.' Therefore, behind a judgment there is always the fact of pure experienceNote. The combination of subject and object representations in a judgment is in truth realized through this. Of course, it is not that a complete representation always appears first, from which analysis begins. There are also cases in which the subject representation appears first, eliciting various associations in a fixed direction, and after a selection one among them is determined. Yet even in this case, when the determination is finally made, a complete representation containing both subject and object representations must first emerge. In short, it is where this representation, having operated implicatively from the start, becomes actual that we obtain a judgment. That there must be pure experienceNote at the basis of a judgment holds true not only in judgments concerning empirical facts, but equally in purely rational judgments. For example, even geometrical axioms are all based upon a kind of intuition. Even in the case of abstract concepts, to compare two things and make a judgment requires at its basis the experience of a unifying factor. The so-called necessity of thinkingNote emerges from this. Hence, if, as stated before, not only perceptions but also the consciousness of relations can be designated experience, we can say that at the foundation of purely rational judgments, too, there lies the fact of pure experienceNote. Furthermore, regarding judgments arising as the result of inference, just as LockeNote stated that even in demonstrative knowledge there must be intuitive proof at every step (LockeNote, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. IV, Chap. II, §7), there must always be the fact of pure experience at the base of each judgment forming a link in the chain. Even when synthesizing judgments from various perspectives to arrive at a conclusion, even if there is no factual intuition unifying the whole, a logical intuition that synthesizes and unifies all relations is operating (even the three laws of thought are a kind of inner intuition). For example, inferring from various observations that the earth must move is after all a judgment based upon a logical method rooted in a kind of intuition.

Traditionally, thinking and pure experience have been considered completely distinct kinds of mental activity. Yet if we now discard all dogmas and consider the matter directly—as JamesNote stated in his essay 'A World of Pure Experience'—relations themselves are experienced directly. What differs is merely the content of what is experienced, whereas the manner of experiencing is identical. Viewed from without, perception and the mental image that constitutes the element of thinking can be distinguished by saying that one is based on stimulation of peripheral nerves coming from external objects while the other is based on stimulation of the cerebral cortex; viewed from within as well, we do not ordinarily confuse perception and mental image. Yet when considered deeply, this distinction too is merely relative. In the present moment of experience, an image is directly a reality, and in dreams images are completely taken for perceptions.

As there may be various objections to regarding thinking and perceptual experience as belonging to the same genus, I should like to discuss these points somewhat. Commonly, perceptual experience is regarded as passive, its operation being entirely unconscious, while thinking, by contrast, is regarded as active, its operation being entirely conscious. Where, however, is such a clear demarcation to be found? Even in thinking, when it operates and develops freely, it takes place under virtually unconscious attention; on the contrary, it becomes conscious precisely when its progression is hindered. What makes thinking advance is not our voluntary activity; thinking develops of itself. It is only when we relinquish ourselves entirely and become one with the object of thought—that is, the problem—or more appropriately put, when we submerge ourselves within it, that we witness the activity of thinking. Thinking possesses its own laws and acts of itself; it does not follow our willNote. Becoming one with the object—namely, directing attention to it—might be called voluntary, but in this respect perception is identical: we can freely direct our attention to what we wish to see. Of course, in thinking, unity is looser than in perception, and its transitions seem conscious—which is why I previously posited this as its characteristic; yet upon rigorous consideration, this distinction too is relative. In thinking as well, at the instant of transition from one representation to another, it is unconscious; while the unifying activity is actually operating, it must be unconscious. When we become conscious of it as an object, that activity already belongs to the past. Thus the unifying activity of thinking lies entirely outside the willNote; it is only that when we reflect upon a certain problem, there are diverse directions and our choosing or rejecting among them seems free. Yet such a phenomenon is not absent in perception either. In somewhat complex perceptions, how we direct our attention is free: for instance, in viewing a single painting, we can attend to the form or attend to the color. Furthermore, it is said that in perception we are moved from without, whereas in thinking we move from within; yet the distinction between inner and outer is after all merely relative. It merely appears so because the mental images that serve as the material of thinking are comparatively mutable and free.

Next, it is commonly thought that perception is the consciousness of concrete facts while thinking is the consciousness of abstract relations, the two being entirely disparate in kind. Yet we cannot be conscious of purely abstract relations as such; the operation of thinking is always conducted by borrowing some concrete mental image. Thinking cannot take place without mental images. For example, to prove that the sum of all angles in a triangle is equal to two right angles, one must rely on the mental image of a particular triangle. Thinking is not an independent consciousness detached from mental images, but a phenomenon accompanying them. Gore argued that the relation between a mental image and its meaning is identical to the relation between a stimulus and its response (Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory). Thinking is the reaction of consciousness to a mental image, and the mental image is the starting point of thinking; thinking and mental image are not two separate things. No mental image is ever independent; it necessarily appears in some relationship with the whole of consciousness, and this aspect constitutes the consciousness of relation in thinking. What is regarded as pure thinking is merely one in which this aspect is conspicuous. Now, having conceived the relation between mental image and thinking in this way, is such a thinking-aspect absent in perception? By no means. Like all conscious phenomena, perception too is a systematic operation, and within it lies the consciousness of relation. What is called a concrete perception is an act of judgment in which sensation serves as the subject and the mental image as the predicate; in perception there already operates a unifying activity that connects with other things. For instance, in perceiving a horse, one's attention does not stop at the sensation of the moment; there is already contained within it the consciousness of relation, such as the horse's ability to run or carry loads.

In the above, viewed psychologically, I have argued that thinking too is a kind of pure experience. Thinking, however, is not merely a fact within individual consciousness, but possesses objective meaning. The distinctive prerogative of thinking lies in expressing truth. While in pure experience, wherein one directly intuits one's own conscious phenomena, there is no question of truth or falsehood, in thinking it may be said that there is a distinction between true and false. To clarify these points, it is necessary to discuss in detail the meanings of the objective, of realityNote, and of truth; yet when considered with utmost criticality, I believe there is no reality outside the facts of pure experience, and that these properties can be explained psychologically. As stated before, the meaning of consciousness arises from relations with other things—in other words, it is determined by the system into which that consciousness enters. Even with the identical consciousness, diverse meanings arise depending on the different systems into which it enters. For example, even a mental image that is a consciousness of meaning, when viewed solely by itself without relation to anything else, is merely a fact of pure experience possessing no meaning whatsoever. Conversely, a perception that is a consciousness of fact also possesses meaning from the viewpoint that it bears relations to other things upon a system of consciousness; it is only that in many cases that meaning is unconscious. What thought, then, is true and what thought is false? We always believe the most powerful among systems of consciousness—that is, the greatest and deepest system—to be objective reality, regarding agreement with it as truth and collision with it as falsehood. Viewed from this perspective, perception too can be right or wrong. That is, viewed from a certain system, when it accords well with its purpose it is right, and when it violates it, it is erroneous. Of course, within these systems there are various meanings; one might make distinctions such that the system behind perception is largely practical, whereas the system of thinking is purely intellectual. Yet just as the ultimate purpose of knowledge is practical, I believe reason may be said to lie hidden at the root of the will. I intend to discuss this later under the topic of the will, but such distinctions among systems cannot be called absolute. Furthermore, within the same intellectual activity, association or memory may be called a unification of relations merely within individual consciousness, whereas thinking alone is trans-individual and universal. Yet such a distinction also arises from forcibly restricting the scope of our experience to the individual, failing to realize that before pure experience there is rather no such thing as the individual (the will is a lesser demand for the unity of consciousness, while reason is its deep and profound demand).

Thus far, I have compared thinking with pure experience, showing that even on points where the two are commonly thought to be completely disparate in kind, points of agreement can be found upon deep consideration. Now, by discussing somewhat the origin and culmination of thinking, I wish to make the relationship between the two still clearer. Everyone will readily grant that pure experience is prior to thinking. The operation of reflective thinking is something that arises secondarily from it. Why, then, does such an operation arise? As stated previously, consciousness originally constitutes a system; its natural state is to develop and complete itself spontaneously. Yet in the course of that development, contradictions and collisions among various systems arise; it is in this situation that reflective thinking appears. However, what thus collides and contradicts when viewed from one side is, when viewed from the other side, immediately the beginning of a larger systematic development. In other words, it may be called an incomplete state of a greater unity. For example, both in action and in knowledge, when our experience becomes complex, various associations appear, and its natural course is obstructed, we become reflective. Behind this contradiction and collision there is implicitly signified the possibility of unity; at the moment of resolution or decision, the beginning of a greater unity is already established. Yet we never remain merely in an inner state of unity such as decision or resolution. It goes without saying that action accompanies decision; even thought always possesses some practical meaning; thought must always appear in action—that is, it must attain the unity of pure experience. Therefore, the fact of pure experience is both the Alpha and the Omega of our thought. In short, thinking is nothing more than the process whereby a great system of consciousness develops and realizes itself; if viewed from the standpoint of residing within a great unity of consciousness, thinking is merely ripples upon a great intuition. For example, when we struggle over a certain goal, the unifying consciousness that is the goal is constantly operating behind it as an intuitive fact. Therefore, thinking possesses neither content nor form distinct from pure experience; it is merely pure experience in an incomplete state, though deep and expansive. Viewed from the other side, true pure experience is not merely passive, but rather constructive and possessing a universal aspect—that is, it may be said to contain thinking.

Pure experience and thinking are originally different ways of viewing the identical fact. If, as HegelNote once maintained with the utmost force, the essence of thinking lies not in being abstract, but rather in being concrete, it becomes virtually identical with pure experience in the sense I have stated above; one might even say that pure experience is directly thinking. Viewed from the perspective of concrete thinking, the universality of a concept is not, as is commonly said, an abstraction of similar properties; it is the unifying powerNote of concrete facts. HegelNote also stated that the universal is the soul of the concrete (HegelNote, Wissenschaft der Logik, III, S. 37). And because our pure experience is a systematic development, the unifying powerNote operating at its base must directly be the universality of the concept itself; the development of experience becomes directly the advancement of thinking—that is, the fact of pure experience is the self-realization of the so-called universal itself. Even in sensation or association, a latent unifying activity is operating behind them. Conversely, in thinking as well, at the instant when the unity operates, as stated before, the unity itself is unconscious. It is only when the unity is abstracted and objectified that it appears as a different consciousness; yet at this point it has already lost its unifying activity. If pure experience means something simple or passive, it would indeed conflict with thinking; but if experience means to know things just as they are, simplicity and passivity cannot on the contrary be called the state of pure experience; the truly direct state is constructive and active.

We commonly believe that through thinking we know the universal, and through experience we know the individual. Yet the universal does not exist separate from the individual; the truly universal is the potentiality behind individual realization, the power within the individual that causes it to develop—like the seed of a plant. If it were something abstracted from the individual that stood in opposition to other particulars, it would not be a true universal, but rather still a particular; in such a case, the universal would not rank above the particular, but would stand on the same level with it. For example, regarding a colored triangle: viewed from the triangle, color might be a particular, but viewed from color, triangle is a particular. Such an abstract and powerless universal cannot become the ground of inference or synthesis. Therefore, the truly universal that is the foundation of unity in the activity of thinking must be a potentiality identical in content with individual actuality, differing merely in whether it is implicative or manifest. The individual is the determination of the universal. When we conceive the relation between individual and universal in this way, even logically the distinction between thinking and experience disappears. What we call our present individual experience can in truth be viewed as something in the midst of development—that is, as still possessing the potentiality to be more finely determined. For instance, even our sensations still have room for differentiation and development; viewed from this angle, they can still be deemed universal. Conversely, even a universal, if its development is restricted to that point, can be called individual. Commonly, only that which is determined in space and time is designated individual; yet such determination is merely external. A true individual must be individual in its content—that is, it must possess unique characteristics; where the universal reaches the apex of its development, there is the individual. Viewed in this sense, what is commonly called sensation or perception is an extremely impoverished universal, whereas something like the painter's intuition, laden with profound meaning, can on the contrary truly be called individual. To regard merely material things determined in space and time as individual is, I believe, fundamentally a materialist dogma. Viewed from the standpoint of pure experience, experiences must be compared by their content. Space and time are merely forms that unify on the basis of such content. Perhaps the strength and vividness of sensory impressions and their close connection with feelings and desires are also factors leading people to think of them as individual; yet so-called thought is by no means unrelated to feeling and desire. That which strongly stirs feeling and desire is considered especially individual, I believe, because feeling and desire, compared to knowledge, are our very purpose itself, and stand closer to the culmination of development.

In summary, thinking and experience are identical; while a relative difference can be seen between them, I believe there is no absolute distinction. I do not mean by this, however, that thinking is merely personal and subjective. As stated before, pure experience can transcend the individual. Stated thus, it may sound exceedingly strange, but because experience knows time, space, and the individual, it is beyond time, space, and the individual. It is not that there is the individual and then experience; there is experience and then the individual. Individual experience is nothing more than a special, small sphere of experience delimited within experience.

I should like now, from the standpoint of pure experienceNote, to discuss the nature of the willNote and clarify the relationship between knowledge and volition. In many cases, the willNote aims at bodily movement and is accompanied by it; yet the will is a mental phenomenon and is inherently distinct from movements in the external world. Movement is not necessarily a requisite condition of the will; even if movement did not occur due to some external circumstance, the will remained the will. As psychologists state, for us to will a movement it suffices merely to recall past memories—that is, one need only direct attention to it, and movement spontaneously follows. Moreover, viewed from pure experienceNote, this movement itself is nothing more than a succession of kinesthetic sensations. When viewed directly, all purposes of the will are likewise facts within consciousness; we always will our own state; in the will, there is no distinction between inner and outer.

When we speak of the will, it is often thought that there is some special faculty; in reality, however, it is nothing more than the experience of transition from one mental image to another. To will a certain thing is to direct attention to it. This can be seen most clearly in so-called involuntary acts; even in cases such as the succession of perceptions mentioned previously, the shift of attention and the progression of the will completely coincide. Of course, the state of attention is not limited to cases of the will, and its scope appears broad; yet what is commonly called the will is the state of attention directed toward a system of motor representations—in other words, the case where this system occupies consciousness and we become unified with it. One might perhaps think that merely attending to a representation differs from viewing it as the purpose of the will, but that is a difference in the system to which the representation belongs. All consciousness is systematic; a representation never arises in isolation, but necessarily belongs to some system. Even with the identical representation, depending on the system to which it belongs, it becomes an intellectual object or a purpose of the will. For example, even in recalling a glass of water: when it is associated merely with external circumstances, it is an intellectual object; but when it is associated with one's own bodily movement, it becomes a purpose of the will. As GoetheNote said, 'Fair are the stars in heaven, which we desire not,' nothing that fails to enter the system of representations of one's own movement can become a purpose of the will. It is a clear fact that all our desires are established through the recollection of past experiences. As for their characteristic intense feeling and sensation of tension: the former is because the system of motor representations is based upon our strongest life instincts, while the latter is nothing other than the muscular sensation accompanying movement. Furthermore, merely recalling a movement might not seem immediately equivalent to willing it; but that is because the motor representation has not yet occupied the whole of consciousness. Once one becomes truly unified with it, it straightway becomes the execution of the will.

What difference, then, is there between a system of motor representations and a system of intellectual representations? Tracing back to the origin of conscious development, there is no such distinction; our organism is originally structured to perform various movements for the preservation of life. Consciousness arises in accompaniment with such instinctive actions, and hence is impulsive rather than perceptual; voluntary movement arises secondarily through the recollection of such instinctive actions. Originally, all consciousness is impulsive, and our attention is governed by it. For example, in the case of simple sensations, pain elicits defensive movements and pleasure elicits attractive movements; we attend to them because of these movements. Only when the direct connection between sensation and movement is severed does sensation become independent, giving rise to intellectual consciousness. Intellectual consciousness is an incomplete state of the will—a state wherein the transition from sensation to movement is suspended. Concrete mental phenomena necessarily possess both aspects; knowledge and will are merely distinctions made on the basis of the conspicuous aspect of the identical phenomenon. In short, perception is a kind of impulsive will, and the will is a kind of recollection. The reason why intellectual representations and motor representations appear disparate is that the former are formed through complex relations and are static, while the latter are simple and dynamic. Yet even an intellectual representation, when it becomes the sole focus of consciousness, possesses motor power (ideomotor action). Intellectual systems and volitional systems do not conflict in kind; they differ merely in the degree of their realization.

Just as in the will it cannot be said that the objective is entirely subjected to the subjective, so in knowledge it cannot be said that the subjective is subjected to the objective. When one's own thought becomes objective truth—that is, when one knows that it is the law of realityNote and reality moves in accordance with it—subject and object are unified. In knowledge, one identifies oneself with the object; in the will, one identifies the object with oneself. In both cases, the culmination is the union of subject and object. In the deepest knowledge, there is always the element of the will, and in the deepest will, there is always the element of knowledge. As SpinozaNote maintained, the will and the intellect are one and the same (Spinoza, Ethics, II, Prop. 49). HegelNote also stated that the will is a special mode of thinkingNote—thinking translating itself into actuality (HegelNote, Philosophie des Rechts, §4, Zusatz). Both emerge from the self-development of pure experienceNote. When the unifying activity develops within, it is thinking; when it realizes itself without as bodily action, it is the will.

Furthermore, we commonly say that the will is free. What, however, does so-called freedom mean? Originally, our desires are given to us; we cannot generate them freely. We are free only in the sense that our action is determined by the deepest, innermost demand of our own nature, without external compulsion. Freedom does not mean indeterminism or caprice; true freedom is self-determination in accordance with the necessary laws of one's own nature. When the will realizes the fundamental unity of consciousness, it is completely free.

As discussed above, there is no absolute distinction between the will and knowledge; what are called distinctions are mostly dogmas bestowed from without. As facts of pure experience, there is no distinction between will and knowledge; both are the realization of a systematic whole. When a unifying representation realizes itself, if we view it from the perspective of its content, it is knowledge; if we view it from the perspective of its realization, it is the will. In artistic creation or technical skill, knowledge and will are completely fused into one.

The standard of all truth does not lie outside, but rather in the state of our pure experience; to know truth means to accord with this state. Even in so-called abstract disciplines like mathematics, the foundational principles are grounded in our direct intuition. In the will as well, the standard of satisfaction is the realization of unity. The activity of the will is not merely a state of wishing; wishing is a state of conscious disunity, a case where the realization of the will is hindered. Only the unity of consciousness is the state of volitional activity. Even if actuality runs counter to one's superficial wishes, when one is satisfied with actuality and becomes one with it, actuality is the realization of the will. Conversely, no matter how complete the circumstances may be, if there are various other wishes and actuality is in a state of disunity, the will is hindered. The activity of the will pertains to oneness and non-oneness—that is, unity and disunity.

For example, here is a pen. The instant one sees it, there is neither knowing nor willing; it is simply a single actuality. When various associations arise concerning it, the center of consciousness shifts, and the prior consciousness is viewed as an object, the prior consciousness becomes merely intellectual. Conversely, an association arises that this pen is something with which to write characters. While this association remains appended to the prior consciousness as its fringe, it is knowledge; but when this associative consciousness itself tends toward independence—that is, when the center of consciousness seeks to shift to it—it becomes a state of desire. And when this associative consciousness finally becomes an independent actuality, it is the will, and simultaneously one can also be said to truly know it. Whatever the case, the state in which a system of consciousness develops in actuality is called the operation of the will. Even in thinking, where one concentrates attention on a certain problem and seeks its solution, there is the will. Conversely, even in drinking tea or drinking sake: if it is merely this actuality, it is the will; but if the consciousness of tasting its flavor emerges and becomes the center, it becomes knowledge—and this consciousness of tasting is itself the will in this case. The will is a system of consciousness more fundamental than ordinary knowledge, serving as the center of unity. The distinction between knowing and willing does not lie in the content of consciousness, but is determined by its position within the system.

Reason and desire seem at first glance to conflict with each other, but in truth both possess the identical nature, differing merely in scale and depth. What we call the demand of reason is the demand of an even greater unity—that is, the demand of a universal system of consciousness transcending the individual—and it can rather be viewed as the manifestation of a great trans-individual will. The scope of consciousness is by no means confined within the so-called individual; the individual is merely a small system within consciousness. We ordinarily take as our center the small system having bodily survival as its core; yet if we consider with an even greater system of consciousness as the axis, this great system is the self, and its development is the realization of the self's will—such as in the case of the fervent religionistNote, scholar, or artist. The law of reason stating 'it must be thus' and the tendency of the will stating merely 'I desire this' appear entirely different; yet upon deep reflection, they share the identical root. At the basis of all that is called reason or law, the unifying activity of the will is operating. As Schiller and others have argued, even something like an axiom originally developed out of practical utility, and in its mode of genesis it does not differ from our mere wishes (Sturt, Personal Idealism, p. 92). Turning to look at the tendency of our will: though it appears lawless, it is governed by its own necessary laws (it is the unity of individual consciousness). Both are laws of the development of conscious systems, differing merely in the scope of their efficacy. Furthermore, some distinguish the will from reason by asserting that the will is blind; yet whatever is a direct fact to us cannot be explained; even in reason, its foundational intuitive principles cannot be explained. Explanation means that one system can subsume another. What serves as the pivot of unity cannot be explained; in that case, at all events, it is blind.

What I here call intellectual intuitionNote (intellektuelle Anschauung) is the intuition of what is called the ideal—what is commonly regarded as beyond experience. It is the direct intuition of that which ought to be known dialectically—such as the intuition of the artist or the religionistNote. In respect of being an intuition, it is identical with ordinary perception, but in its content it is far richer and more profound.

Intellectual intuitionNote is regarded by some as a kind of extraordinary, mystical faculty, and by others as a fantasy entirely outside experiential facts. Yet I believe that it belongs to the same genus as ordinary perception, and that no clear boundary line can be drawn between them. Even ordinary perception, as stated before, is by no means simple; it is necessarily constructive and contains ideal elements. What I perceive in the present is not seen merely as the present; it is seen explanatorily through the power of past experience. This ideal element is not something like an association merely added from without; it is an element constituting perception itself, and perception itself is transformed by it. The ideal element latent at the base of this intuition can become infinitely rich and profound. It differs according to each person's natural endowment, and even in the same person according to the advancement of their experience. What could not be experienced at first, or what could only gradually be known dialectically, emerges as an intuitive fact as experience progresses. This scope cannot be limited by taking one's own present experience as the standard; that oneself cannot do it does not mean others cannot do it. Mozart said that in composing musical scores, even with a long piece, he could view the whole at a glance like a painting or a statue. It is not merely expanded quantitatively, but becomes profound qualitatively; for instance, the intuition of the religionistNote, who through loveNote can attain the intuition of the union of self and other, must be the culmination of this. Whether a person's extraordinary intuition is mere fantasy or truly an intuition of realityNote is determined by its relations with other things—that is, by its effects. Viewed from direct experience, fantasy and true intuition possess the identical nature, differing merely in the scale of their sphere of unity.

Some consider that intellectual intuitionNote differs in kind from ordinary perception in that it transcends time, space, and the individual, looking directly into the true state of realityNote. Yet as stated before, viewed from the strict standpoint of pure experienceNote, experience is not bound by forms such as time, space, and the individual; rather, these distinctions are established by intuition that transcends them. The intuition of the painter, too, transcends time and space in this sense. All acts of the willNote, too, are intuitions of this kind. The emergence of a new thought in a scholar, of a new motive in a moralist, of a new ideal in an artist, or of a new awakening in a religionist is in every case based upon the manifestation of such a unity (and is therefore based upon mystical intuition). If our consciousness were merely of a sensory nature, it would probably remain in the state of ordinary perceptual intuition; but the ideal spirit seeks infinite unity, and this unity is bestowed in the form of so-called intellectual intuition. Intellectual intuition is nothing other than pure experienceNote having deepened and expanded its unity.

Just as ordinary perception is thought to be merely passive, so intellectual intuition is also thought to be merely a state of passive contemplation. True intellectual intuition, however, is the unifying activity itself in pure experienceNote; it is the grasping of life—like the knack of an art or the inspiration of an artist. It is by no means an inert, static state; on the contrary, it is the most vigorous, creative activity. In it, knower and known, act and object, are completely one. It is the living source of all creativity and development.

Conceiving intellectual intuition in the manner stated above, it is evident that intellectual intuition lies at the foundation of thinkingNote. ThinkingNote is a kind of system; at the foundation of a system there must be an intuition of unity. In small matters, as JamesNote remarked in 'the stream of consciousness,' in the consciousness that 'a pack of cards is on the table,' when the subject is conscious the predicate is implicitly contained, and when the predicate is conscious the subject is implicitly contained; in short, a single intuition is operating at the base. I consider this unifying intuition to be of the identical nature as the knack of an art. In great matters, behind all great thought, such as the philosophies of PlatoNote and SpinozaNote, a great intuition is operating. In thought, what is called the intuition of genius and ordinary thinking differ merely in quantity, not in quality; the former is nothing more than the intuition of a new and profound unity. At the basis of all relations there is intuition; relations are established through it. However freely and expansively we may let our thoughts range, we cannot step outside fundamental intuition; thought is established upon it. Thought cannot be explained indefinitely; at its foundation lies an inexplicable intuition, upon which all proofs are erected. At the foundation of thought there is always something mystical latent; even geometrical axioms are a kind of this. It is often said that thought can be explained while intuition cannot; yet explanation merely means that it can be subsumed under a more fundamental intuition. This fundamental intuition of thought, while on the one hand serving as the foundation of explanation, is not merely a static form of thought, but on the other hand becomes the power of thinking.

Just as intellectual intuition lies at the foundation of thinking, so intellectual intuition lies at the foundation of the willNote. For us to will a certain thing is to intuit directly the state of the union of subject and object; the will is established through this intuition. The progression of the will is the development and completion of this intuitive unity, at whose foundation this intuition is operating from start to finish; and where it is completed becomes the realization of the will. That we feel our self active in the will is because of the presence of this intuition. There is no separate self. The true self is this unifying intuition. Hence the ancients said: 'Acting all day, yet not acting'; viewed from this intuition, there is tranquility in motion, and one can say: 'Doing, yet not doing.' In this intuition, moreover, which transcends knowledge and will while serving as the foundation of both, one can find the union of knowledge and will.

True religious awakening is neither abstract knowledge based upon thinking nor merely blind emotion; it is the self-attainment of the profound unity lying at the foundation of knowledge and the will—that is, a kind of intellectual intuition, the grasping of deep life. Therefore, no blade of logic can stand against it, and no desire can shake it; it is the foundation of all truth and satisfaction. Though its forms may be manifold, I believe this fundamental intuition must lie at the basis of all religion. Religion must lie at the foundation of scholarship and morality; it is through this that scholarship and morality are established.

A philosophical worldview and view of life—which tell us that the world is such-and-such, that human life is such-and-such—bear an intimate relationship to the practical demands of morality and religionNote, which dictate what humans ought to do and wherein they must find peace of mind. One cannot remain satisfied while harboring mutually incompatible intellectual convictions and practical demands. For example, a person who possesses lofty spiritual demands cannot be satisfied with materialism, and someone who believes in materialism will eventually come to harbor doubts regarding lofty spiritual demands. Truth, by its very nature, is one. Truth in the domain of knowledge must immediately be practical truth, and practical truth must immediately be truth in the domain of knowledge. Anyone who thinks deeply and is earnest inevitably comes to seek the accord of knowledge and feeling-volition (sentiment and will). Before debating the questions of what we ought to do and wherein we ought to find our peace of mind, we must first elucidate what the true state of heaven-and-earth and human life is, and what true realityNote is.

That in which philosophy and religionNote most thoroughly coincided was Indian philosophy and religion. In Indian philosophy and religion, knowledge is immediately the goodNote, and delusion is immediately evil. The substance of the universe is Brahman, and Brahman is our very mind, Atman. Knowing this identity of Brahman and Atman constituted the ultimate secret of philosophy and religion. ChristianityNote was at first entirely practical, yet the human heart's demand for intellectual satisfaction proved irrepressible, eventually giving rise to medieval Christian philosophy. Although Chinese morality shows a severe lack of philosophical development, thought since the Song dynasty exhibits this tendency to a remarkable degree. All these facts testify to the existence of a deep demand at the root of the human heart seeking the harmony of knowledge and feeling-volition. Tracing the development of European thought as well, ancient philosophy, beginning with SocratesNote and PlatoNote, made pedagogical and moral aims primary. In the modern era, along with the particularly rapid strides made in knowledge, the unification of knowledge and feeling-volition became arduous, fostering a tendency toward the bifurcation of these two domains. Yet this does not accord with the innate demand of the human heart. If we wish now to comprehend true realityNote and know the genuine aspect of heaven-and-earth and human life, we must doubt as far as we can doubt, cast away all artificial presuppositions, and take as our point of departure immediate, direct knowledge that leaves no room whatsoever for further doubt. In our common sense, we imagine that material things exist in the external world apart from consciousness, and that behind consciousness there exists a mind performing various operations; this assumption also serves as the foundation for the actions of all people. However, the independent existence of matter and mind is merely an assumption posited in response to the demands of our thinkingNote, leaving abundant room for doubt should we choose to scrutinize it. Moreover, that which is termed science is likewise constructed upon hypothetical knowledge and does not aim at the deepest explanation of reality. Even within philosophy, which purports to pursue such an explanation, many thinkers are not sufficiently critical, taking conventional assumptions as their foundation without subjecting them to radical doubt.

Although the independent existence of matter and mind is conceived as if it were an intuitive fact, a moment of reflection immediately reveals that this is not so. What is the desk presently before our eyes? Its color and shape are sensations of the eye; feeling resistance upon touching it is a sensation of the hand. Even such properties as a thing's shape, magnitude, location, and motion—all that we intuit—are by no means the objective states of the thing-in-itself. It is utterly impossible to intuit the thing-in-itself apart from our consciousness. The same holds true when we examine the mind-in-itself. What we know are the operations of intellect, emotion, and will, and not the mind-in-itself. Even our belief that there exists an identical self continuously operating is, viewed psychologically, nothing more than a continuum of identical sensations and feelings; both matter and mind, which we treat as intuitive facts, are merely the constant conjunctions of similar conscious phenomena. What compels us to believe in the existence of matter and mind as things-in-themselves is solely the demand of the law of causality. Yet whether one can truly infer an existence external to consciousness on the basis of the law of causality is the very problem that must first be investigated. What, then, is direct knowledge that leaves no room for doubt? It is none other than knowledge of the facts of our intuitive experience—that is, knowledge concerning conscious phenomena. Regarding the conscious phenomena present before us, no one can harbor any doubt. When one currently feels pain, the fact that one feels pain is an unshakeable reality. Even regarding intuitions of external objects, though the reality of the external object may be doubted, the fact of its appearance within our consciousness cannot be doubted in the least. We often speak of intuition as mistaken experience, but it is not intuition itself that is mistaken; rather, the judgment rendered on its basis is mistaken. For instance, when we perceive a round object as angular, the intuition itself of appearing angular is not in error at all; the error arises when we desire to bring it into correspondence with an external object. Therefore, knowledge concerning the facts of immediate experience—namely, conscious phenomena—is the sole indubitable knowledge. The term "immediate experience" risks occasional misunderstanding, but what I mean by immediate experience is the state prior to the division of the knower and the known, where subject and object are mutually submerged, and before any distinction between an objective world and a subjective world has arisen. Intuition is used in precisely this sense. Such intuitive experience must serve as the foundation upon which all our knowledge is constructed.

Whenever philosophy casts off inherited presuppositions and seeks a new and firm foundation, it invariably returns to such direct knowledge. At the dawn of modern philosophy, both Francis Bacon's establishment of experience as the origin of all knowledge and DescartesNote's taking as his basis the proposition "I think, therefore I am" (*cogito ergo sum*) issued from this very purpose. Descartes doubted all things and thereby arrived at the existence of the thinking self. Yet Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" cannot yet be said to have carried doubt to its absolute exhaustion. Although he took his point of departure from the intuitive facts of consciousness, positing an "I" as an independent substance behind that consciousness must be deemed already to have transgressed the bounds of intuitive fact and added a dogmatic presupposition. What he obtained as intuitive fact was merely the fact of thinkingNote. His acknowledgment of the ego, of God, and of corporeal substance upon this basis was nothing more than the result of inferring from the laws of thought taken as certain. If one is to doubt as far as one can doubt, why did he not doubt these very laws of thought? (This is precisely the point of KantNote's critique of Descartes). We must doubt even the laws of thought. The indubitable intuitive fact is solely the fact of immediate experience—that is, conscious phenomena as such. (Of course, if, as HegelNote and various historians of philosophy maintain, DescartesNote's "I think, therefore I am" was not an inference but an expression of intuitive certainty in which reality and thought are unified, it becomes identical with my own point of departure). In contrast to taking the intuition of facts in consciousness—namely, the facts of immediate experience—as the starting point of all knowledge, there are those who take thought as the most certain criterion. These thinkers bifurcate things into true reality and phenomenal appearance, claiming that the facts we experience intuitively are merely phenomenal appearances and that true reality can be clarified solely through the operation of thought. Of course, among these, common sense and natural science do not entirely reject intuitive experience; rather, they treat one specific kind of experiential fact as true and another kind as false. For example, they say that the sun, moon, and stars appear small, but in reality are immense; or that celestial bodies appear to move, but in reality it is the earth that moves. Yet such notions arise from inferring experiential facts occurring under one set of conditions from experiential facts occurring under another set of conditions. Under each set of conditions, each is an immovable fact. Since both are equally intuitive facts, on what grounds is one judged true and the other false? Such thinking arises because touch is more universal and practically essential than the other senses, leading people to regard that which derives from touch as the true reality of things; yet a moment's reflection reveals that this lacks logical coherence. A certain school of philosophers, differing from this, goes so far as to assert that experiential facts are entirely phenomenal appearances, insisting that the substance of things can be known solely through thought. However, even granting that a transempirical reality beyond our experience exists, how could such a thing ever be known through thought? No one can deny that the operation of our thought is itself a species of conscious phenomenon arising within consciousness. If our experiential facts cannot know the substance of things, then thought, being the very same kind of phenomenon, should likewise be incapable of knowing it. Some take the universality and necessity of thought as the criterion for knowing true reality, but these qualities are ultimately a kind of feeling intuited within our own consciousness, and are thus, after all, facts within consciousness.

The position that treats all sensory knowledge as erroneous and asserts that the true nature of things can be known solely through thought began with the Eleatics and reached its culmination in PlatoNote. In modern philosophy, thinkers of the CartesianNote school all believed that the true nature of reality could be known through clear and distinct thought. Thought and intuition are regarded as if they were entirely disparate operations, but when viewed purely as facts in consciousness, they are operations of the identical kind. Intuition or experience is commonly thought to be a purely passive operation of perceiving individual things just as they are without relation to others, whereas thought is considered an active operation of comparing things, judging them, and determining their relations; yet among actual conscious operations, there exists no purely passive operation whatsoever. Intuition is immediately an immediate judgment. When I previously spoke of intuition as the starting point of presuppositionless knowledge, I employed it in precisely this sense.

When I spoke above of intuition, I did not refer merely to operations such as sensation. At the root of thought as well, there is always a certain unifying factor. This is something that must be intuited. Judgment arises from its analysis.

When viewed on the basis of direct knowledge without positing the slightest presupposition, realityNote is solely our conscious phenomena—that is, the facts of immediate experience. Apart from this, there is no reality whatsoever. Some, following common sense, may consider that outside of conscious phenomena there exist material things and there exists mind, and that these constitute true reality. However, as stated previously, the independent existence of matter and mind is by no means an indubitable, immediate fact; these presuppositions are merely abstract concepts that arose because thinkingNote sought to systematically organize the facts of immediate experience.

The rigorously critical view that seeks to eliminate all dogmatism and depart from the most indubitable direct knowledge, and the view that posits a reality apart from the facts of immediate experience, appear utterly incompatible, yet historically they bear the most intimate relationship. Thinkers such as LockeNote departed from the former stance and cast doubt on the existence of material reality; KantNote went so far as to declare the thing-in-itself entirely unknowable; and FichteNote took the activity of the intuiting spirit as the foundation of reality, recognizing nothing whatsoever outside conscious phenomena. Modern philosophy as a whole displays a tendency to depart from the fact of immediate experience in which subject and object are unified, seeking to explain reality on this basis. Considering the matter in concrete actuality, what manner of reality could we possibly acknowledge beyond that which we intuit? The notion of reality cannot be conceived apart from our intuitive experience. What is called matter possesses no objective reality apart from the conjunction of our sensory phenomena such as color and shape. Even when scientists hypothesize infinitesimal atoms or an ether pervading space, these are merely hypotheses posited for the unified explanation of sensory reality. If things-in-themselves were to exist separately and apart from our intuitive experience, by what means could we ever know their existence? In what conceivable relation could they stand to our conscious phenomena? The relation between conscious phenomena and stimuli in the brain is precisely analogous to how what the ear perceives as sound is perceived by the eye and hand as the vibration of a string.

We are accustomed to thinking that there are two distinct kinds of experiential facts—conscious phenomena and material phenomena—yet in truth there is only one kind: namely, conscious phenomena. Even what is termed material phenomena does not differ in the least from conscious phenomena. Everyone readily concedes that the so-called secondary qualities, such as color and sound, are subjective conscious phenomena; however, the so-called primary qualities, such as shape, magnitude, and motion, do not differ in the slightest from secondary qualities in being subjective conscious phenomena. Even time and space in Newton's laws of motion, differing from the time and space we intuit, are a species of abstract concept constructed by thought. What we call the objective world denotes the presence of a system that unifies our conscious phenomena; it does not mean that independent objects exist separately from conscious phenomena. That is to say, within the facts of pure experienceNote in which the opposition between subject and object is submerged, the constant conjunction of conscious phenomena is the fundamental fact, while the existence of material things is merely a hypothesis posited for the purpose of explanation.

So-called materialists regard the existence of matter as an indubitable, directly self-evident fact, attempting to explain away mental phenomena on this basis; yet such an idea represents an extreme inversion. As stated earlier, objective matter cannot exist apart from our conscious phenomena. Viewed from the facts of pure experienceNote, there is no distinction between mental phenomena and material phenomena; what we call the objective material world is merely a single system unifying our conscious phenomena. The opposition of subject and object is not an opposition between two realities; it arises because one and the same reality is viewed from different unifying perspectives. Our world is constructed out of the facts of conscious phenomena. Diverse philosophies and sciences are all nothing more than explanations of this singular fact.

My speaking here of conscious phenomena risks inviting misunderstanding. One might think that by conscious phenomena I mean that mind alone exists apart from matter, yet my term "conscious phenomena" by no means carries such a connotation. To separate matter and mind and consider mind as an independent existence opposing matter is already not a fact of pure experienceNote, but a hypothesis posited by reflective thought. By conscious phenomena, I refer to the facts of truly pure experience, wherein subject and object are mutually submerged and thing and self are mutually forgotten. In this sense, conscious phenomena are the sole reality. If this point is misunderstood, my thesis might appear to collapse into solipsism or drift into agnosticism. Philosophers who seek to defend spirit against materialists often fall into this error and bring about their own downfall. Such arguments, I believe, do not arise from strictly maintaining the standpoint of pure experience, but are rather the outcome of dogmas superimposed upon pure experience.

One such difficult problem is the objection that, if conscious phenomena alone are reality, does one not collapse into solipsism, holding that the world is entirely one's own idea? Or, how can the consciousness of others ever be known? However, our speaking of our own consciousness and another's consciousness is already not a fact of immediate experience, but a hypothesis generated by the reflection of thought. Within the facts of immediate experience, there is no distinction between self and other. What we designate as our own consciousness is merely the binding together of past and present conscious phenomena by one and the same unifying power. If this relationship permits them to be conceived as a single consciousness, the identical relationship can likewise be discovered between the consciousness of self and that of others.

The content of our thoughts and feelings is entirely universal. Though thousands of years may elapse and thousands of miles intervene, thoughts and feelings communicate mutually with one another. Mathematical truths, for instance, are identical in anyone's consciousness. If we speak of the identity of consciousness in this sense, the identity within an individual's consciousness and the identity between the consciousness of self and other differ not in the slightest. We separate the consciousness of self and other into mutually incompatible, separate consciousnesses because we believe that consciousness belongs to each individual body and that bodies are spatially separated. Yet the physical body is itself merely one system of our conscious phenomena. It is not that our consciousness belongs to the body, but rather that the body appears within consciousness. If we doubt the independent existence of the body, we can likewise doubt the absolute distinction between the consciousness of self and other. As HumeNote argued, if one's own mind is merely a bundle of perceptions, the consciousness of others is precisely the same. The distinction between the consciousness of self and other is nothing more than a difference in the combination of conscious phenomena. That which belongs to the same system of consciousness constitutes the same self, while that which belongs to a different system becomes the consciousness of another. The supposition that this fact contradicts the law of causality arises, in short, from a misunderstanding of the law of causality.

That the law of causality is a habit of thought arising on the basis of changes in our conscious phenomena is evident from the fact that the universe as a whole cannot be explained by this causal law. According to the law of causality, every effect must invariably possess a cause. Yet even if we trace causes backward into the past, no matter how far we go we can never reach a first cause; nor, if we pursue effects forward into the future, can we ever reach a final, ultimate effect. If we take the law of causality as the ultimate law of reality, we fall into an infinite regress and attain no resolution whatsoever (as in Kant's antinomies). The law of causality is not the fundamental law of reality, but merely a formal category of thought that grasps the development of reality abstractly. True reality is not moved from without by causes; it develops itself from within. It is what HegelNote termed the infinite (*das Unendliche*).

Even in the case of a single sensation of color, it may be said to contain infinite variations within itself; that is, as our consciousness becomes more refined, we become able to discern diverse shades even within a single sensation of color. Conscious phenomena are by no means combinations of fixed elements, but a living whole capable of infinite differentiation and development. As WundtNote designated them psychical compounds (*psychische Gebilde*), conscious phenomena are not a mere sum of elements, but a creative synthesis (*schöpferische Synthese*) that constantly produces novel qualities (Wundt, *Grundriss der Psychologie*, §5). Because a single, originally universal reality has differentiated itself into being, such a coherent system exists.

What is immediate realityNote before we have added the craftsmanship of thinkingNote? That is, what is the fact of truly pure experienceNote? It is the state of intuition prior to the opposition of subject and object. When speaking of the state wherein subject and object are undivided, some might immediately imagine something like the unconscious sensations of an infant, but what I call the undividedness of subject and object by no means designates such an impoverished state of consciousness. When we think and reflect—that is, when consciousness is bifurcated—consciousness is rather in an incomplete state; whereas in the creation of art or in mystical religious experience, when the full power of the spirit is concentrated and thing and self are mutually forgotten, that very moment is the truly fulfilled state of immediate experience. At this moment there is not yet any opposition between subject and object, no division between intellect, emotion, and will; there is solely a pure, self-sufficient, independent activity.

Intellectualist psychologists treat sensations and ideas as the elements of mental phenomena, supposing that all mental phenomena consist of their combinations. Yet actual conscious phenomena in concrete experience are never an aggregation of such dead elements. Consciousness from the very outset is a unified whole, and what we call sensations or ideas are merely abstract concepts obtained through the reflective analysis of this whole. In the facts of pure experienceNote, intellect, emotion, and will are not yet divided. When admiring a beautiful flower, the feeling of beauty, the perception of the flower, and the judgment of thought are harmoniously fused into one. Analyzing this into perception, feeling, and will is the subsequent workmanship of thoughtNote. The same applies to the phenomena of the willNote. When we are about to perform an action, it is not merely that an idea precedes and a feeling accompanies it; rather, the entire spirit surges dynamically in a single direction. Volition is indeed the fundamental form of consciousness and the most vigorous manifestation of pure experience. Intellectualist psychologists attempt to reduce volition to the association of ideas, but this is tantamount to killing living consciousness and dissecting its corpse. Conscious phenomena are intrinsically dynamic and active. That is, volition must be acknowledged as the very fact of pure experienceNote.

Traditional psychology was predominantly intellectualist, but recently voluntarism has gradually gained prominence. WundtNote is its foremost exponent. His establishment of will as the foundation of mental phenomena must be recognized as having advanced a step closer to the true aspect of reality. Yet even he cannot be said to have completely transcended the opposition of subject and object. For him, will remains the activity of the subject, conceived as confronting an objective target. In true realityNote, subject and object do not oppose each other; they are merely two aspects of the identical activity. The conception that subject and object oppose each other and that the will acts upon an objective target is something that arises after reflection has set in, at which point we have already departed from true reality.

Commonly, people assume that subject and object are separately independent realities, imagining that conscious phenomena arise through the mutual interaction of these two entities. Consequently, knowledge is regarded as the copying of the object by the subject, and will as the acting of the subject upon the object. Yet, as stated previously, the opposition between subject and object is not a fact of immediate experience, but merely an assumption of reflective thought. Reality is solely a single pure activity, and subject and object are merely the two poles into which this activity differentiates and develops. This becomes unmistakably clear when observing the emotion of loveNote. In genuine love, there is no distinction between the one who loves and the one who is loved. In love, the two are completely unified, becoming a single life. If the loving self and the loved object remain separated, it is not true love. The same holds true of knowledge. To truly know a thing means to become one with it. Even what scientists call the objective world cannot escape this relationship.

It is often thought that the world viewed scientifically is the most objective, containing not the slightest element of our feeling and volitionNote. Yet scholarship is by no means pure knowledge divorced from feeling and volition. A scientist's search for truth is undertaken driven by intellectual curiosity—that is, by a demand of feeling and volition. The ecstasy felt upon discovering truth is nothing other than the satisfaction of feeling and volition. Even the material world, which natural scientists treat as objective reality, is grounded upon our trust and demand regarding the laws of nature. Truth is the unified joy of our spirit. A purely objective world severed from feeling and volition is merely our abstract concept, not living reality. Not only the world of art, but even the world of science is established upon the unification of our feeling and volition. Great scientific discoveries always arise from profound intuition—that is, from an illumination of feeling and volition. In this respect, science and art emerge from the very same root.

Because we imagine that there is an entity called the individual that gives rise to sentiments of joy, anger, loveNote, and desire, the notion also arises that feeling and volition are purely individual. Yet it is not that a person possesses feeling and volition; rather, feeling and volition move the person. There exist profound feelings and volitions that transcend individual consciousness. The emotion felt when encountering great art, and the reverence felt in the presence of sublime moral deeds, are by no means the private sentiments of an individual person; they are the pulsation of universal life running through heaven, earth, and the cosmos. In feeling and volition we rather transcend the boundaries of the individual and can unite with universal reality. If the ultimate purpose of philosophy is to investigate the true aspect of heaven-and-earth and human life, we must not, while satisfying intellectual demands, leave the demands of feeling and volition out of account.

To the ancient Greeks, all of nature was living nature. Thunder and lightning were the wrath of Zeus upon Mount Olympus, and the voice of the nightingale was the lamentation of Philomela. Their world was a world of truly living reality wherein subject and object were not yet bifurcated. Modern humans analyzed nature, reduced it to a dead mechanism, and severed subject and object into two distinct halves. Yet the modern spirit likewise cannot remain satisfied with this mechanical view of nature. Contemporary art, religionNote, and philosophy all strive to express this authentic meaning.

As stated above, the state of consciousness in which subject and object are submerged and intellect, emotion, and will are unified is true realityNote. When we conceive of an independent and self-sufficient true reality, it spontaneously appears in this form. Let us now reflect upon the form of this true reality. What is the form of true reality? It is the form of "the one is many, and the many is one"—that is, the unity of unification and differentiation. True reality from the beginning is a single whole; this whole differentiates and develops itself, generating various distinctions, while simultaneously embracing them to form a single harmonious system. I wish to elucidate why, within the state of consciousness unifying intellect, emotion, and will, there arise knowledge, feeling, and volition, and how various distinctions are generated from it.

Authentic reality, like the true spirit of art, is something that cannot be communicated mutually from one person to another. That which can be communicated is merely an abstract, empty shell. Though we appear to refer to identical things by means of identical words, the living reality intuited by each person is unique to that individual and can never be communicated in its entirety to another. Words and concepts are merely shadows of reality. Reality in itself is always creative and individual. Examining the operation of thoughtNote, when we seek to solve a problem, there is at first a vague intuition of the whole; this gradually differentiates to produce various ideas, and when the appropriate association of ideas is attained, this operation is completed. The same holds true when observing the progression of the willNote. The willNote appears at first as an impulsive desire, which differentiates into the relationship between ends and means, and is finally realized in decision and action.

As JamesNote noted in his discussion of the "stream of consciousness," all consciousness assumes the aforementioned form. For example, when uttering a sentence, we possess at first a vague consciousness of meaning regarding the whole—a "feeling of tendency"—which differentiates and develops into individual words, until at last the whole is completed as a single sentence. This unifying consciousness of the whole operates from beginning to end, and individual words are nothing other than the differentiation of this whole. No matter how complex or how simple conscious phenomena may be, they always possess the form wherein a single whole differentiates and develops to complete itself. Not only is this true of volition and thoughtNote, but it applies equally to perception and impulse; hence, all consciousness, however simple, must be said to be established through the identical form as volition.

The distinction between impulse and perception on the one hand and volition and thought on the other is a difference of degree, not a difference in kind. Processes that remain unconscious in the former are merely brought into clear consciousness in the latter. Even in perception, when recognizing an object, the entire system of past experience operates immediately to form a single intuition. The same applies to impulse: the demand of the entire life manifests itself as a single impulse. In thought and volition, this unifying process of the whole emerges clearly upon consciousness, whereas in passive consciousness it operates unconsciously or in the form of a certain feeling.

The distinction between activity and passivity—namely, whether the mind acts from within or receives action from without—arises from thought positing the independent existence of mind and matter and bifurcating what is inside and outside the mind. Within the facts of pure experienceNote, it is merely a difference of degree. When we possess a clear idea of purpose, our state appears to be active.

According to the claims of the empiricist school, our consciousness develops entirely through the action of external things. However, no matter how external things may act, unless there is a unifying operation on the side of the mind that receives them, consciousness could never be established. The stimuli of external things merely provide an occasion; the development of consciousness is due to the immanent power of the spirit itself. Just as a plant absorbs sunlight and moisture to grow of itself, consciousness assimilates external stimuli to develop its own system. It is not that external things enter into the interior; rather, the interior unifying power embraces the external world. Therefore, without distinction of active or passive, without distinction of subject and object, true reality does not lie outside conscious phenomena; it can be said that the true reality of immediate experience is always established through the identical form.

Commonly, people imagine that fixed, static material objects exist as facts. Yet concrete facts in actuality are always events. Just as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that all things flow (*panta rhei*), and as Goethe declared, "All that is transitory is only a symbol" (*Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis*), and "Formation, transformation, the eternal mind's eternal converse" (*Gestaltung, Umgestaltung, des ewigen Sinnes ewige Unterhaltung*), and in his poem *Dauer im Wechsel* (Permanence in Change) wrote, "No movement is the last, every onward step is a striving; all things change, all things vanish, and nothing everlasting endures" (*Keine Regung ist die letzte, jedes Fortgehn ist ein Ringen, alles wechselt, alles schwindet, und kein Ew'ges hat Bestand*), reality is a ceaseless flux, a continuous succession of events that does not pause for even a moment.

What we call the objective world in the external realm likewise does not lie outside our conscious phenomena; it too is something unified by a certain kind of unifying operation. It is merely because this unifying operation transcends our individual consciousness and possesses universal necessity that we designate it the objective world. Objective truth designates that which brings about the identical unification for anyone whomsoever; it is a universal system of consciousness divorced from individual arbitrariness. Both the laws of science and the norms of morality are manifestations of this universal unification. It becomes an objective fact through being recognized alike by all people. What is called an objectively independent world arises from this very universal nature.

The facts of our experience appear to be manifold, yet upon reflection they are all one and the same realityNote, constituted according to an identical mode. Let us now discuss this fundamental mode of all realityNote.

First, we must acknowledge that behind all reality there operates a certain unifying factor. Certain scholars take truly simple and independent elements—such as the atoms posited by atomists, or the simple reals (*Reale*) posited by Herbart—as the foundation of reality, supposing that complex phenomena arise through their combination. Yet nowhere do truly independent elements exist. That elements combine and interact mutually implies that behind both there must exist a common unifying ground. Two atoms adjacent in space can stand in relation to one another only because they subsist beneath the unity of the identical space. If two entirely independent things existed, they could neither mutually know nor mutually act upon each other. Opposition presupposes unity, and difference presupposes identity. If, in this manner, all things are established through opposition, a certain unifying factor must invariably lie concealed at their root.

In material phenomena this unifying factor is regarded as physical force existing in the external world, while in mental phenomena it is attributed to the unifying powerNote of consciousness; yet, as stated earlier, the distinction between matter and mind is merely a hypothesis posited by abstract thoughtNote, and in concrete reality the two are one. Viewed from the facts of pure experienceNote, the unifying factor at the ground of the universe is none other than the unifying power of consciousness. This unifying power is not a fixed, static entity, but a dynamic unity that develops itself while constantly encompassing contradiction and opposition. Where there is no opposition there is no unity, and where there is no contradiction there is no development. That which lacks distinct opposition also lacks distinct unity. The most potent reality is that which most thoroughly harmonizes and unifies diverse contradictions.

To conceive of that which unifies and that which is unified separately is due to abstract thinkingNote; in concrete reality, these two cannot be sundered. Parts without unity are mere chaos, and unity without parts is an empty abstraction. Observing a tree, the unifying powerNote of the tree does not exist apart from roots, trunk, branches, and leaves; and without the unifying power of the whole tree, branches, leaves, trunk, and roots would be meaningless. The tree exists upon the opposition and unity of its parts.

When the unifying powerNote and that which is unified are separated, they do not constitute reality. For example, when a person piles up stones, the stones and the person are disparate entities; such mechanical combination is not true reality. True reality is an organic whole wherein the unifying power is immanent within the parts, and the parts are the self-expression of the whole. Only that which unifies itself and develops itself can be called true reality. Independent and self-sufficient true reality invariably embodies this mode; whatever does not is entirely our abstract concept.

Reality is that which constitutes a system of itself. What compels us to believe in it as an authentic reality is precisely this character. Conversely, that which forms no system, or that which does not harmonize with other systems, is rejected by us as false or as an illusion. Some, seeking the ultimate of true reality, analyze parts indefinitely, aiming to arrive at indivisible, simple elements; or, seeking the beginning of the universe, strive to reach a first cause. Yet these are all the consequences of abstracting reality spatially or temporally—illusions that ignore the system of living reality. Just as in infinitely divisible space one can never arrive at a final point, so in infinitely continuous time one can never reach a first moment. Reality is an infinite system, and the system itself is self-contained. The notion of seeking the ultimate of reality in parts or origins is, like claiming that space has a boundary, merely looking abstractly at one side while forgetting the other.

All living things encompass infinite opposition; that is, they possess the capacity to generate infinite transformation. The spirit is called a living thing because it continuously encompasses infinite opposition and develops itself from within. Not only spirit, but nature as well is a living whole. The diverse phenomena of nature, while mutually opposing and contradicting one another, form a single harmonious system as a whole. The motion of celestial bodies, the reproduction of flora and fauna, the succession of the four seasons—all workings of nature are the unfolding of infinite opposition and unity. The laws of the natural world are nothing other than the forms of this unity. Nature does not exist as a dead machine; it is established through a single unifying operation, and should be regarded as the development of one living Nature.

HegelNote said that whatever is rational is real, and whatever is real is rational. Despite having met with various objections, this dictum contains a profound truth. By rational, he did not mean the rules of abstract logic, but the living principle (*logos*) that unfolds itself and unifies itself. Reality is precisely the self-realization of this principle. Reality is not an irrational chaos, but a rational system. That we are able to comprehend reality is also because reality originally embodies a rational form. Reality and reason are not two separate things; they differ merely as the concrete unfolding and the abstract reflection of the identical reality. Such erroneous notions arise because we regard the opposition between unity and its content as if they were mutually independent realities.

RealityNote, as stated previously, is the activity of consciousness. Yet according to ordinary interpretation, the activity of consciousness appears from moment to moment and vanishes in an instant, such that the identical activity cannot be perpetually linked. If that is so, then from our individual life’s experience on a minor scale to the cosmic development up to the present day on a major scale, are these facts ultimately mere phantasms and dreams, fragmented and disordered, lacking any unifying ground whatsoever between them? In response to such a question, I wish to state that realityNote is established in reciprocal relation, and that the universe is the singular activity of the sole reality.

I believe I have broadly explained that the activity of consciousness is established through unity within a certain scope; yet many people still disbelieve that such unity exists beyond a certain boundary. For instance, some believe that yesterday's consciousness and today's consciousness are wholly independent, and can no longer be regarded as a single consciousness. When considered from the standpoint of direct experience, however, such a distinction is merely a relative distinction, not an absolute one. Even when we examine phenomena that anyone would consider a unified consciousness—such as thinkingNote or the willNote—their process is nothing other than a succession of mutually distinct ideas. If we differentiate them with precision, we could even conceive of these ideas as separate consciousnesses. Nevertheless, if these continuous ideas can be seen not as individually independent realities, but as a single activity of consciousness, then there is no reason why yesterday's consciousness and today's consciousness cannot likewise be viewed as a single activity of consciousness. When we contemplate a single problem or plan an enterprise across multiple days, we can clearly see that the identical consciousness operates continuously; it differs only in the duration of time.

In the connection of consciousness, simultaneous connections such as perception, successive connections such as association and thinkingNote, and lifelong connections such as self-awareness are all differences in degree, constituted by the identical nature. The idea that conscious phenomena shift from moment to moment such that an identical consciousness never recurs, and that yesterday's consciousness and today's consciousness—even granting that they are identical in content—are completely distinct consciousnesses, does not stem from viewing things from the standpoint of direct experience; rather, it is the result of postulating time and deducing that conscious phenomena manifest upon it. If conscious phenomena are established through the form of time, then by the very nature of time, a conscious phenomenon that has once passed away can never return. Time possesses only a single direction. Even if a consciousness possesses entirely identical content, under the form of time it could no longer be called identical. However, when we now return to the foundation of direct experience, this relationship must be completely reversed. Time is merely a form that orders the content of our experience; for the idea of time to arise in the first place, the contents of consciousness must be combined and unified into one. Otherwise, we could never associate and arrange before and after so as to think temporally. Therefore, the unifying operation of consciousness is not governed by time; on the contrary, time is established by this unifying operation. We must say that at the root of consciousness there lies an unchanging something that transcends outside of time.

From the standpoint of direct experience, consciousness of identical content is directly the identical consciousness. Just as a truth is identical no matter who conceives it or in what era, because our yesterday's consciousness and today's consciousness belong to the same system and possess the identical content, they are directly united into one consciousness. An individual's lifetime is the development of consciousness forming such a singular system.

From this perspective, at the root of the spirit there is always an unchanging something. It is this that broadens its development day by day. The passage of time is the shifting of the unifying center accompanying this development; this central point is always the "now." If, as stated above, an unchanging unifying powerNote operates at the root of consciousness, the question arises as to what form this unifying power exists in. This entity is by no means an existence like a material body fixed within time and space; it is the Principle (logos), that is, the law that governs conscious phenomena. Among those who discuss the existence of GodNote, some conceive of God as an entity akin to a material object, lurking behind the world to govern it; but such a God is not the true God—it is nothing more than an idol. God is the law of heaven and earth, the Principle governing heaven and earth. In the exact same manner, the unifying powerNote at the root of the spirit is not an object like a material thing, but the law governing the activity of consciousness.

Principle is ordinarily conceived as an operation governing the association of ideas within our subjective consciousness. Yet such an operation is merely the footprint of the activity of Principle, not Principle itself. Principle itself is creative; we can become thoroughly one with it and act in immediate accord with it, but we cannot regard it as an object of consciousness.

In the ordinary sense, for a thing to exist means that it exists in a certain place, at a certain time, and in a certain form. The existence of Principle spoken of here, however, belongs to a completely different category. If it were bound to a single place like that, it could not perform the work of unification; such a thing would not be a living, true Principle. Principle has neither place nor time, yet acts everywhere and at all times; becoming the ground of time and space, it brings time and space into being. We see things within time and space, but we cannot see Principle itself. Yet because all things are established through Principle, all things can be seen as manifestations of Principle; things are the shadow of Principle. It is not that GodNote created the universe directly; God is the Principle of the universe, and all things come to be through God. Just as an individual's consciousness directly unites yesterday's consciousness with today's consciousness into a single reality as described above, the relationship between our individual consciousness and another person's consciousness is likewise identical. The consciousnesses of self and other are considered separate and mutually exclusive, but this too is the result of binding the consciousness of self and other to material bodies—independent objects in time and space. Viewed from direct experience, there is no such thing as a distinction between self and other; the connection between the consciousnesses of self and other is identical to the connection of an individual's own consciousness. For example, when each person independently thinks through the properties of a triangle, each person's system of thinking is an identical system; in this instance, there is no distinction between self and other, but entirely identical consciousness. Objective truth is the unification of a trans-individual system of consciousness.

As stated previously, the connection of consciousness between individual and individual is identical to the connection between yesterday's consciousness and today's consciousness within a single individual. The former appears to be combined indirectly from without, while the latter appears to be united directly from within; yet if viewed as combined from without, the latter is also connected by signs of a certain internal sensation, which is identical to the consciousness between individuals being connected by signs such as language. If viewed as united from within, the former is also directly united precisely because there originally exists an identical ground between individuals. That which we call the objective world, as stated repeatedly, is not established apart from our subjectivity; the unifying powerNote of the objective world and the unifying power of subjective consciousness are identical—that is, both the so-called objective world and consciousness are established by the identical Principle. For this reason, a person can comprehend the principle of cosmic constitution through the Principle within oneself. Even supposing there were a world different from the unity of our consciousness, such a world would be one entirely devoid of relation to us. Any world that we can in any way know and comprehend must stand under the identical unifying power as our consciousness.

From the view that the world exists apart from consciousness, one might say that all things exist individually and independently; however, from the standpoint that conscious phenomena are the sole realityNote, all things in heaven and earth are the development of a sole reality, constituting a system of a single reality akin to the consciousness of each of us. The system of reality is the development of the unifying powerNote that forms the center of reality.

RealityNote must be unified into one while simultaneously containing opposition. Where there is one reality, there is always another reality opposing it. Yet these two do not exist as separate realities detached from one another; they are united as two aspects of a single reality. The development of reality proceeds infinitely in such a manner that one system opposes another system, whereupon both are united into a greater system that synthesizes them, and furthermore this system opposes another system to be united into an even greater system.

Such a process of the development of reality can be clearly observed in our conscious phenomena. If we examine the willNote, for instance, the will is a demand to realize a certain ideal; demand and realization are two opposing aspects, and the will is the activity that unites both. In thinkingNote likewise, there is an opposition between subject and predicate, and judgment and thinking are established where these two opposing terms are united. The fundamental form of reality is precisely of this nature. The deeper the opposition—that is, the more differentiated the content of reality becomes—the firmer its unity and the greater its development. Now, how does the variety of differentiation in reality arise from the fundamental form of reality described above? First, what is the so-called "self"? We call the fundamental unifying power of the system of consciousness the "self"; the self is the unifying operation of reality. In contrast, the objective world that becomes the object of the self is the content to be unified, standing in opposition to the self's unifying operation. Hence, the opposition between subject and object is by no means an opposition between separate and independent realities, but merely the internal opposition of a single reality. The greater the unifying self becomes, the greater the content of the objective world becomes. As our knowledge advances and our feelings deepen, our objective world likewise expands and magnifies.

Even from the viewpoint of psychology, our self is the unifier of consciousness. And when viewed from the standpoint that consciousness is the sole true reality, this self is the unifying powerNote of reality, the activity that creates all things and transforms all things. Our self is directly the unifying power of the universe.

The distinction between spiritual phenomena and material phenomena likewise by no means implies that there are two kinds of reality. Spiritual phenomena are viewed from the unifying aspect, that is, from subjectivity, while material phenomena are viewed from the content aspect to be unified, that is, from objectivity. Various difficulties arise precisely from abstracting only one aspect of reality and positing it as an independent reality. Issues such as the mind-body problem also ultimately arise from this misunderstanding. Next, whence arises the distinction between active and passive? The active and the passive do not constitute two distinct kinds in reality either; rather, they arise from the relationship between the unifying aspect and the content aspect of reality. That is, the active signifies the unifying activity of reality, while the passive signifies the unified content. Looking at conscious phenomena, we feel active when unifying activity is vigorous, as in the willNote, and we feel passive and receptive when the content that is the object of unity becomes predominant, as in sensation. The active and the passive are inseparable two aspects of the identical reality; there is neither pure activity nor pure passivity. Even in the will, which is most active, it contains a passive aspect called desire; and even in sensation, which is most passive, it contains an active aspect called attention.

Ordinarily, that which precedes in temporal sequence is considered the active agent; however, that which precedes temporally is not necessarily the active agent. The active agent must be that which possesses power—namely, the unifier. That the active agent precedes refers not to the sequence of time, but to the order of unity. The distinction between active and passive gives rise to the relationship of cause and effect, and simultaneously gives rise to the relationship of purpose. Just as a cause induces an effect, the active agent unifies the passive; and just as an end unifies means, the active agent unifies the passive. Next, let me say a word regarding the distinction between the unconscious and the conscious. The subjective unifying operation is always unconscious, whereas that which becomes the object of unity is brought into consciousness. That is, we are conscious of the unified content. For example, when we engage in thinkingNote, the ideas that are the objects of thought are clearly conscious, but thinking itself, which is their unifying operation, is not conscious. In the will likewise, the ideas serving as the motives of the will are clearly conscious, but the operation of the will itself is not conscious. Thus, the subjective unifying operation is always unconscious. When this unifying operation is objectified and becomes an object of consciousness, it is no longer the unifying operation, but the content to be unified.

From the perspective of psychology, there is the objection that since mental phenomena are all conscious phenomena, unconscious mental phenomena cannot exist. However, our mental phenomena do not refer merely to the content that serves as their object; mental phenomena cannot be established apart from the unifying powerNote that unifies this content. This unifying power is in itself unconscious, being the power that constantly embraces and unifies the contents of consciousness. Finally, regarding the relationship between phenomenon and substance (noumenon), this too can be explained as the relationship between the two aspects of reality. When we distinguish between substance and phenomenon in material bodies, taking force or atoms as substance and various sensory properties as phenomena, this is nothing other than taking the unifying operation as substance and the unified content as phenomena. In mental phenomena, taking the self as substance and various conscious phenomena as phenomena is precisely the same.

Stated in this way, it would follow that authentic subjectivity must be said to be the substance of reality; yet ordinarily, we conversely believe that material bodies reside in objectivity. But in my view, such a material body is not an objective reality, but merely an abstract idea—that is, nothing more than an abstract concept stripped of the subjective unifying operation.

RealityNote is only one; it presents various forms depending on the divergence of our perspectives. Nature is commonly thought to be an objective realityNote wholly independent of our subjectivity; yet does such a nature that is truly an objective reality genuinely exist? Nature is ordinarily said to be the material world that presents various forms in space and undergoes various changes in time. And matter is considered an objective reality that serves as the object of sensation.

Nature is that which has been stripped of the subjective aspect—namely, the unifying operation—from concrete reality. Therefore, nature has no self. Nature is merely moved from without in accordance with necessary laws; it does not move from itself. Yet the laws of nature are by no means outside of nature; they are the intrinsic nature of nature itself. For nature to move according to its own nature means that nature moves by itself. Nature is merely a blind self, simply lacking a reflective self. The tendency of present-day science strives to be as objective as possible. Thus, psychological phenomena are explained physiologically, physiological phenomena physico-chemically, seeking to reduce all natural phenomena to the motion of purely objective matter. But does such a purely material world genuinely constitute an independent reality? As discussed previously, the nature that we directly intuit is by no means such a purely objective, abstract nature. Nature as directly intuited—colors, sounds, and the like—is the fact of direct experience of concrete reality prior to the bifurcation of subject and object.

Matter is conceived as though it could be directly intuited as that which fills space; yet the extension of an object that we can concretely conceive is nothing more than conscious phenomena of touch and sight. There is no such thing as matter filling space apart from our consciousness. The so-called world of objective matter is merely an abstract concept abstracted entirely from the facts of our direct experience. Furthermore, if we conceive of nature purely materially as above, there would be no distinction among animals, plants, and living organisms; all would be reduced to nothing more than the motion of identical matter. But such a nature is merely a nature constructed within the mind of the physicist, and by no means nature in actuality. The nature we directly intuit possesses distinctive significance in each case. Plants have the significance of plants, and animals have the significance of animals. Teleological development in living organisms, for instance, can never be explained by purely mechanical motion. That we view nature objectively means that we do not superimpose our own subjective feelings or will onto nature; it does not mean that we regard nature itself as objective matter. Regarding it as objective matter is, on the contrary, the result of adding the subjective contrivance of scientific thinking.

We ordinarily consider purely mechanical nature to be true objective reality, and concrete nature in direct experience to be subjective phenomena, because we think that all conscious phenomena arise from our subjective physical bodies, and that what arises from the physical body is subjective delusion, whereas the external matter moving the physical body is true objective reality. However, as previously discussed, this relationship is completely inverted; viewed from direct experience, nature is a unified reality in which subject and object are not yet bifurcated. The physical body is also nothing more than a part of objective nature differentiated from this reality. It is not that nature exists apart from the unifying operation of our spirit; the unifying operation of nature is directly the unifying operation of our spirit. For us to know nature means that the self becomes one with nature. Nature as truly concrete reality is never established entirely without a unifying operation. Nature is likewise a single system, possessing a unifying self. It is simply that by means of our reflective thinking, we abstract only the objective aspect that is the object of that unity, and name it nature. The unifying aspect is precisely our self. For us to view things purely objectively, detached from subjective feelings, means to subsume the individual subject and unite with the unifying self of the object itself. At this moment, we harmonize with the spirit of the object, that is, the spirit of nature. When we discover truth in scholarship or experience sublime aesthetic feeling in art, these are all moments when we subsume the self and unite with the spirit of the object. A noble spirit is directly a noble nature. That objective nature accords with our spirit is not due to an analogical anthropomorphism that projects our subjectivity onto nature. The intrinsic essence of nature itself is spiritual, established through the unity of spirit.

From the standpoint of strict mechanical explanation in present-day science, the teleological development of organisms must ultimately be explained through the laws of physics and chemistry. That is, it may be thought that such phenomena also fall under the dominion of the mechanical law of causality, without any necessity to recognize the operation of a distinct, special motive cause. However, the mechanical law of causality itself by no means negates the unifying powerNote lurking at the root of nature. The law of causality itself is a kind of unifying power.

Even if, in explaining nature, we permit the operation of such a unifying powerNote alongside mechanical force, there is no need for these two explanations to conflict. On the contrary, waiting upon one another, a complete explanation of nature is made possible. Suppose, for example, that there is a bronze statue here; as copper, which is its material, it will undoubtedly follow the laws of physics and chemistry, yet it is not to be viewed merely as a lump of bronze, but as a work of fine art expressing our ideal—that is, it is manifested through the unifying power of our ideal. However, this unifying operation of the ideal and the physico-chemical laws governing the material itself naturally belong to distinct spheres, and by no means encroach upon each other. It is only where there is such a unifying self as stated above that nature possesses purpose and significance, and first becomes living nature. The unifying power that is the life of such nature is not merely an abstract concept fabricated by our thinkingNote; rather, it is a fact that manifests directly upon our intuition. When we gaze upon a flower we loveNote or a familiar animal, we directly grasp a unifying something in the whole. This is the self of that thing, the substance of that thing. Artists are individuals endowed with this intuition to the highest degree. At a single glance, they penetrate to the true reality of things and seize upon that unifying something. What they express is not superficial facts, but the unchanging substance lurking deep at the root of things.

GoetheNote immersed himself in the study of living organisms and was a forerunner of modern evolutionary theory. According to his doctrine, behind natural phenomena there lurks an archetypal phenomenon (Urphänomen). All natural phenomena are the developmental variations of this archetypal phenomenon. With respect to plants, there is an archetypal plant (Urpflanze), and the various species and parts of plants are all the developmental metamorphoses of this archetypal plant. In the same way, behind animals there is an archetypal animal (Urtier). These archetypal phenomena are the unifying self of nature, the living Ideas (Ideen) that form the ground of nature. Evolution is precisely the unfolding whereby such an Idea develops and differentiates itself to the utmost. What, then, is this unifying self that lurks behind nature? We regard natural phenomena as purely objective realities unrelated to our subjectivity, and believe that the unity of nature has no traffic whatsoever with our spiritual unity. But as stated previously, the unity of natural phenomena is identical to the unity of subjective consciousness, and the significance of nature is bestowed by our spiritual unity. That is, that we discover the essence of nature is due to our own intuition. Nature and spirit are established through the identical Principle. The objective aspect of spirit is called nature, and the subjective aspect of nature is called spirit.

Physical force is believed to have no relation whatsoever to our subjective unity. To be sure, this may be the most minimal and insignificant unity; yet even this is not something established completely apart from our subjective unity. At the root of our activity of willNote, there lies precisely such a blind, unconscious unity.

It is commonly thought that our inferring the significance of nature through our own ideals or affective feelings is merely an analogy, and not a firm, unshakeable truth. Yet viewed from the standpoint of pure experienceNote, true nature is nature as directly intuited, whereas objective nature is nothing more than a kind of abstract construction built upon it.

Nature appears at first glance to be a purely objective realityNote independent of our spirit; in truth, however, it is not a realityNote detached from subjectivity. So-called nature is merely an abstract concept that excludes the spirit—the subjective unifying operation—from the concrete reality of direct experience. Elements of natural phenomena such as colors, sounds, and forces are, in the fact of direct experience, not distinguished in any way from spiritual phenomena. It is solely from the standpoint of reflection that subject and object are divided, positing the one as objective nature and the other as subjective spirit.

When we say that we see the identical stone, we believe that each person holds the identical idea. In actuality, however, it varies according to each person's disposition and experience. It is simply that we abstract the common point—namely, the unifying aspect—within each person's experience and designate it as the identical stone. That is, nature is nothing more than the unifying aspect of our experience. What, then, is that which we ordinarily call the spirit in contrast to nature? That is, what is subjective conscious phenomena? Just as objective nature is the unifying aspect of our experience, subjective spirit is likewise the unifying aspect of our experience. Nature is the objective aspect serving as the object of the unity of experience, while spirit is the subjective aspect that unifies this object. That is, spirit is the unifying operation of reality.

Ordinarily, our spirit is conceived as an independent reality distinguished from objective nature. Yet just as there is no purely objective reality detached from the subjective unity of spirit, neither is there any purely subjective spirit detached from objective content. The activity of our spirit is the activity that unifies objective reality. There is no such thing as an activity of spirit apart from objective reality. Sensation, perception, thinking, and the willNote are all activities that unify objective reality. For the spirit to be active means that objective reality unifies itself. Why, then, is the unifying operation of reality particularly distinguished from its content—namely, that which is to be unified—and conceived as though it were an independent reality? When the unity of reality is still incomplete—that is, when the contents to be unified mutually oppose and contradict one another—the unifying operation is brought into consciousness as particularly distinguished from the content. For example, just as in thinking, when various ideas conflict, one's own thinking as the unifying operation is clearly conscious; and in the will, when various motives conflict, one's own will as the unifying operation is clearly conscious.

When we have attained mastery in an art—that is, when we have achieved the unity of reality—we are, on the contrary, unconscious; that is, we are unaware of this unity of our own. Yet when we desire to advance even deeper—that is, when we seek an even greater unity—we recognize the imperfection of our present unity, and here come to be conscious of our spiritual activity. When the unifying operation of reality is thus brought into consciousness as particularly distinguished from its content, this unifying operation is called spirit, and the unified content is called objective nature. Spirit is the unifying operation of reality in its not-yet-unified state. Considering our spirit as the unifying operation of reality, there is unity in all reality; that is, we must say that there is spirit in all reality. In crystals, in plants, and in animals, we must say that spirit exists in all of them. It is only that the degree of spirit differs according to the depth of that unity. In present-day psychology, some sharply distinguish conscious phenomena from material phenomena, asserting that spirit denotes conscious phenomena alone. However, that which we ordinarily call consciousness, as stated above, is merely a phenomenon that arises in the incomplete state of reality, that is, in the state where unity is imperfect. If we take conscious phenomena alone to constitute spirit, then spirit would amount to nothing more than a defective state of reality. The essence of spirit does not lie in the presence or absence of consciousness, but in the unifying powerNote of reality.

In so-called inanimate things devoid of spirit, their unity is bestowed from without; it is not an internal unity of their own. Therefore, their unity varies depending on the observer, possessing no determinate self. In things endowed with spirit, by contrast, the unity is their own internal unity, possessing a unique and unshakable self that cannot be moved by another.

In modern evolutionary theory, evolving from inorganic matter to plants, animals, and human beings means that reality progressively brings forth its hidden essence into actuality. To employ the phrase of LeibnizNote, it is reality progressively increasing its degree of clarity. This order of evolution is precisely the order in which the unifying powerNote of reality intensifies. In inorganic matter, its unity is most external; in human beings, its unity is most internal. Our self, which is the unifier of spirit, is originally the unifying operation of reality. One school of psychology explains that our self is established by the combination of ideas and feelings; but such a self is an abstract self, not the living, true self. The true self is the unifying power itself that combines conscious phenomena. That we are conscious of the self means that we are conscious of this unifying power. We cannot observe the self like an external object. The self is that which must be directly intuited, not reflected upon.

From the standpoint of pure experienceNote from which I set out earlier, the unifying operation of reality spoken of here is merely an abstract idea; the fact of direct experience itself is devoid of both subject and object, consisting of only a single activity. This activity is precisely our true self. This self is identical to the primordial unifier behind nature. Hitherto, we have considered spirit as opposed to nature; let us now consider briefly the relationship between spirit and nature. According to our previous discussion, nature and spirit are not two separate kinds of reality. Viewed from the aspect of objective content it is nature; viewed from the aspect of subjective unity it is spirit. Both are inseparable two aspects of the identical reality. That we know the objective world and are moved by the objective world means that we know our own objective aspect and are moved by our own objective aspect. Furthermore, that we move the objective world through the willNote means that we move our own objective aspect by means of our subjective unifying power. The activity of spirit is nothing other than the self-unifying operation of the objective world. A great spirit is a spirit that embraces a vast objective world. A great artist directly reflects the true scenery of nature, and great religious figures (such as the BuddhaNote and ChristNote) directly share the identical heart-mind with heaven and earth and all things.

Ordinarily, mental phenomena and material phenomena are distinguished by interior and exterior, conceiving the former as within and the latter as without. Such a conception, however, arises from the delusion that the spirit dwells inside the physical body, being a product of reflective thinking. Viewed from direct experience, there is no such thing as an inner-outer distinction. Mental phenomena conceived as existing within and material phenomena conceived as existing without are all facts of direct experience possessing identical nature. Finally, let me say a word regarding human pleasure and pain. In a word, when our spirit is in a state of perfection—that is, in a state of unity—it is pleasure; when that unity is fractured, it is pain. Even in bodily pleasure, when physiological unity is fulfilled, it is pleasure; when this unity is disrupted, it is pain. As for intellectual and emotional pleasure, when spiritual unity is attained, it is pleasure; when the spirit is fractured and contradictory, it is pain.

Psychologists say that whatever aids our life is pleasure, and whatever obstructs it is pain. Life is the development of an organism's intrinsic nature—that is, the unifying work that realizes its own essence. Therefore, aiding life means fulfilling the unity of spirit.

As stated previously, spirit is the unifying operation of reality, and a great spirit accords with nature; therefore, when we take the small self as our self, there is much pain; whereas when we advance and unite with vast nature, we are able to experience great peace and joy.

From what has been discussed thus far, that which we name nature and that which we call spirit are by no means two fundamentally distinct kinds of realityNote. They are merely two different aspects of the identical reality. And the unifying something at the foundation of this reality is the substance of true reality. GodNote is by no means an entity transcending outside of this reality; the very root of reality is directly GodNote. That which subsumes the distinction between subject and object and unifies spirit and nature is God.

In every era and among all peoples, there is none that does not possess the word "God." Yet according to differences in the degree of knowledge and demands, it is interpreted in various senses. Most so-called religiousNote figures conceive of God as a great human-like being who stands outside the universe and rules over it. However, such a conception of God is extremely infantile; not only does it conflict with contemporary scholarship and knowledge, but even in religionNote, we cannot attain an intimate internal accord between such a God and us human beings. On the other hand, neither can we think, like today's extreme scientists, that matter is the sole realityNote and that physical force is the foundation of the universe. As stated above, there is a spiritual principle at the root of reality, and this principle is precisely God. As in the fundamental tenet of Indian religion, Atman and Brahman are one. God is the Great Spirit of the universe. Since antiquity, various arguments have been advanced to prove the existence of God. Some say that this world cannot begin from nothingness—that there must be someone who made this world, and that such a creator of the world is God; that is, based on the law of causality, they take God to be the cause of this world. Others, based on the fact that this world does not exist by chance but possesses meaning in each detail—that is, it is organized toward a certain definite end—infer that there must be someone who bestowed such an organization, and say that such a cosmic guide is God; that is, they conceive of the relation between the world and God as that between an artwork and an artist. These arguments all attempt to prove the existence of God and determine God's nature from the side of knowledge; besides these, however, there are those who set knowledge entirely aside and attempt to prove the existence of God from moral demands. According to these thinkers, we human beings possess moral demands—namely, conscience; yet if there were no Supreme Sovereign in this universe who rewards the goodNote and punishes evil, our morality would become meaningless; therefore, as the sustainer of morality, we must necessarily recognize the existence of God—thinkers like KantNote belong to this category. Yet can these arguments truly prove the existence of the true God? They say that because the world must have a cause, we must recognize the existence of God; but if one speaks thus on the basis of the law of causality, why can one not take one step further and inquire into the cause of God? If one says that God is without beginning and without end, existing without cause, why can one not say that this world likewise exists in that way? Furthermore, to infer from the fact that the world is expediently organized in accordance with a certain purpose that there must be an omniscient ruler, one must prove factually that all things in the universe are teleologically constructed without exception; yet this is an exceedingly difficult task. If it is said that God's existence cannot be proved unless such a thing is proved, the existence of God becomes exceedingly precarious; some might believe it, while others will not. Moreover, even granting that this were proved, we could still conceive that this world came to be so teleologically constructed by chance. Attempting to prove the existence of God from moral demands is even more flimsy. If there is an omniscient and omnipotent God who sustains our morality, it would undoubtedly impart great strength to our morality; but simply because it is advantageous for our practical action to think so does not serve as a proof that such an entity must exist. Such an idea can be viewed merely as an expedient device. All these theories attempt to prove God indirectly from without, rather than proving God Himself directly within one's own direct experience.

How, then, can we seek the existence of God upon the facts of our direct experience? Even within the breast of our small selves bound by time and space, infinite power lies latent—namely, the infinite unifying powerNote of reality lies latent. Because we possess this power, we can search out the cosmic truth in scholarship and express the true meaning of reality in art; in the depths of our own heart-mind, we can know the root of reality that constitutes the universe—that is, we can apprehend the countenance of God. The infinitely free and autonomous activity of the human heart-mind directly proves God Himself. As Jakob BöhmeNote said, we see God with the inverted eye (umgewandtes Auge).

If we seek God upon external facts, God can never escape being merely a hypothetical God. Furthermore, a God who stands outside the universe as its creator or guide cannot truly be called an absolute and infinite God. Ancient Indian religion and the mystical schools that flourished in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries sought God in internal intuition; I believe this is the deepest knowledge of God. In what form does God exist? Viewed from one side, as Nicholas of Cusa and others said, God is the negation of all things; that which can be affirmed as this or that—namely, that which can be apprehended—is not God. If it were something that could be apprehended as this or that, it would already be finite, incapable of performing the infinite operation that unifies the universe (De docta ignorantia, Cap. 24). Viewed from this aspect, God is absolute Nothingness (Mu). Is God, then, simply nothingness? By no means. At the foundation of the establishment of reality, an unmistakable and unshakable unifying operation is vividly at work. Reality is indeed established by this. For instance, where does the Principle reside that the sum of all angles in a triangle is equal to two right angles? We can neither see nor hear Principle itself, yet does not an austere and unshakable Principle firmly exist here? Or suppose we confront a masterpiece of painting: throughout the whole, we see something whose divine aesthetic grace is vast and fathomless, whose spiritual atmosphere overtakes the viewer; yet even if we try to find the reason why this is so in any single object or scene within it, we can by no means find it. God is the unifier of the universe in these senses, the root of reality; precisely because God can be Nothingness, there is no place where God is not present and no place where God does not work.

Just as no matter how profound mathematical principles may be, they impart no knowledge to those who cannot comprehend mathematics; and just as no matter how exquisite a masterpiece of painting may be, it arouses no emotion in those who do not understand beauty; so to ordinary and shallow human beings, the existence of God seems like a mere fantasy, felt to have no meaning whatsoever, and consequently they regard religion as useless. Those who desire to know the authentic God must by all means discipline themselves to that extent and cultivate an eye capable of knowing this. To such a person, the power of God operates across the whole universe like the spirit of a painter within a masterpiece, felt as a fact of direct experience. This is what is called the fact of seeing God (theophany). Looking at what has been stated above, God might be felt to be a cold, philosophical entity such as the root of the unity of reality, possessing no relation to our warm affective and emotional activities; in truth, however, it is by no means so. As stated previously, our desires arise from seeking a greater unity, and when this unity is attained, it is joy. Even so-called individual self-loveNote is ultimately nothing more than such a unifying demand. However, our spirit, being originally infinite, is never satisfied with the unity of the individual self alone. Advancing further, it must seek an even greater unity. Because our greater self is that which embraces both others and oneself, we come to express sympathy toward others and seek the harmony and unity of self and other. Our altruistic loveNote is the demand for trans-individual unity that arises in this manner. Hence, in altruistic love, we feel an even greater peace and joy than in self-love. And God, who is the unity of the universe, is indeed the root of such unifying activity. God is the root of our love, the root of our joy. God is infinite love, infinite joy, and peace.

Having provided a general explanation of the nature of realityNote, I should now like to discuss practical questions, such as what we human beings ought to do, what the GoodNote is, and where human conduct ought ultimately to arrive. And since I believe that all phenomena belonging to the various practical dimensions of human life can be subsumed under the concept of action, prior to discussing these problems, I wish first to consider what kind of thing action is.

Viewed from the outside, an action is a bodily movement, yet it differs from purely physical movements such as water flowing or a stone falling. It is a movement possessing a certain consciousness and directed toward an end. However, it must also be distinguished from the various reflex movements that appear in organisms—movements that have an end yet are entirely unconscious—as well as from the instinctive behaviors observed in somewhat higher animals, which have an end and are accompanied by a certain degree of consciousness, but in which the end is not yet clearly brought to awareness. An action denotes a movement whose end is clearly conscious. Inasmuch as we humans possess physical bodies, we too engage in various physical movements and perform reflex movements and instinctive operations; nevertheless, that which can be specifically designated as our own activity is confined to such action.

In most instances, an action is accompanied by movement in the external world, that is, bodily operation; however, its essential part of course resides in an internal phenomenon of consciousness. Let us therefore consider what kind of conscious phenomenon an action is from the standpoint of psychology. As stated above, an action refers to an operation that arises from a conscious end; that is to say, it denotes a so-called voluntary movement. Yet while the term 'action' includes external operations, the term willNote refers primarily to internal conscious phenomena; thus, discussing the conscious phenomena of action is synonymous with discussing the will. How, then, does the will arise? Originally, our bodies are constructed in general to perform appropriate movements spontaneously in order to maintain and develop their own life, and consciousness arises alongside these movements, consisting at first of simple feelings of pleasure and pain. As representations concerning the external world gradually become distinct and associative operations grow active, our previous movements cease to be triggered unconsciously in response to external stimuli; instead, the representation of the result is first recalled, which then accompanies the representation of the movement that serves as its means, and subsequently transitions into bodily motion—which is to say that the will comes into being. Thus, for the willNote to arise, there must first be a physical or spiritual predisposition that determines the direction of movement—or in terms of consciousness, the direction of association. In consciousness, this predisposition appears as a kind of impulsive feeling. Whether innate or acquired, it may be termed the power of the will, and here we shall designate it as the motive. Next, the representation of the result acquired through experience and evoked through association—namely the end, or more precisely, the representation of the end—must accompany this motive. It is at this moment that the form of the will is at last constituted; this is designated as desire, and it marks the initial stage of the will. When there is only a single desire, it is accompanied by the representation of movement and breaks forth into action; but when there are two or more desires, what is called the conflict of desires takes place, wherein the most potent among them comes to occupy the dominant position in consciousness and issues into action. This is called resolution. What we term our will refers to the totality of such conscious phenomena, though in a narrower sense it sometimes denotes the operation at the very instant of transitioning into action, or specifically the resolution itself. The essential part of an action resides precisely in this internal conscious phenomenon of the will, whereas external bodily operation is not its essence. Even if an operation fails to occur due to some obstacle, so long as there was genuine will, it can rightfully be called an action; conversely, even if an operation occurs, if there was insufficient will, it cannot be called an action. As the internal activity of consciousness intensifies, there arise acts of will whose ends from the outset are occurrences within consciousness itself. In such cases as well, they can of course be designated as actions. Psychologists distinguish between internal and external, but as phenomena of consciousness, they possess entirely identical properties.

What has been stated above merely describes the process of the will as the essential component of action. Let us now advance a step further and explain what kind of conscious phenomenon the will is in terms of its intrinsic nature, and what position it occupies within consciousness. Viewed from psychology, the will is the operation of unifying representations—that is to say, it belongs to a kind of apperception. There are two kinds of operations that bind representations in consciousness: in one, the cause of the connection of representations resides primarily in external circumstances, where the direction of the connection is not clear to consciousness and is felt to be passive—this is called association; in the other, the cause of the connection resides within consciousness, the direction of the connection is clearly conscious, and consciousness feels itself to be actively connecting—this is called apperception. The will belongs to the latter. In the will, a certain dominant representation serves as the center and systematically unifies the surrounding representations around it. That the will is this kind of apperceptive activity becomes increasingly clear in cases of the conflict of desires. The so-called resolution is nothing other than the culmination of this unification.

What relationship, then, exists between this apperceptive operation of the will and other apperceptive operations? Besides the will, the operations of thinkingNote and imagination likewise belong to apperception. In these operations as well, a certain unifying representation serves as the basis, from which representations are unified so as to accord with its end; thus, in the formal structure of representational activity, they are entirely identical with the will. It is simply because the ends of their unification are not the same, and consequently the laws of unification differ, that they are regarded as mutually distinct operations of consciousness. Let us, however, investigate more closely at what points they differ and at what points they are identical. First, comparing imagination and the will: the end of imagination is the imitation of nature, whereas the end of the will is one's own movement. Accordingly, in imagination, representations are unified to accord with the true condition of nature, whereas in the will, they are unified to accord with one's own desire. Yet upon closer consideration, prior to the movement of the will, one must always first imagine that movement once; and in order to imagine nature, one must first become that thing oneself and think from its perspective. It is merely that imagination inevitably imagines external objects, so that the self cannot completely coincide with them, and one consequently feels that it is not the reality of the self. That is to say, imagining a certain thing and executing it seem inevitably to differ. But if we proceed another step in our reflection, this is a difference of degree, not a difference of nature. When imagination attains the realm of divine inspiration, as seen in the imagination of an artist, the self becomes wholly immersed within it; self and object achieve complete accord, and the activity of the object comes to be felt directly as the activity of one's own will. Next, comparing thinkingNote and the will: the end of thinking lies in truth, and the law governing its connection of representations is the law of logic. We do not necessarily will that which we hold to be truth, nor do we believe that whatever we will is necessarily truth. Moreover, the unification in thinking is merely a unification of abstract concepts, whereas the will and imagination are unifications of concrete representations. In these respects, thinking and the will appear at first glance to be clearly distinct, such that no one would confuse them; yet upon careful consideration, this distinction too is not so absolute and unshakeable. Behind the will there always lurks an appropriate reason. Even if that reason be imperfect, the will nevertheless operates upon a certain truth; that is, it is established by virtue of thinking. Conversely, as Wang Yangming asserted in his doctrine of the unity of knowledge and action, true knowledge must invariably be accompanied by volitional execution. To say 'I think thus, but I do not desire it' means that one does not yet truly know. Reflecting in this manner, the three apperceptions of thinking, imagination, and the will are at their root an identical unifying activity. Among them, thinking and imagination are unifying operations upon representations concerning all things and the self, whereas the will is a unifying operation specifically upon representations concerning the activity of the self alone. Conversely, the former are merely ideal—that is, possible—unifications, whereas the latter is a real unification, which is to say that it can be termed the culmination of unification.

Having thus outlined the position of the will within apperception, I shall now discuss its relationship with other forms of representational connection, namely association and fusion. Regarding association, I stated earlier that that which determines the direction of the connection of representations resides in the external world and not in the internal realm; however, this was argued merely from the standpoint of degree, for even in association it cannot be said that the unifying operation is entirely absent from within. It is simply that it does not appear distinctly in consciousness. As for fusion, the connection of representations is still more unconscious, such that one is not even aware of the binding operation itself; yet even here, internal unification is by no means lacking. In sum, all conscious phenomena possess the identical form as the will, and it can be said that in a certain sense they are all will. And if we designate the unifying powerNote that forms the foundation of these unifying operations as the self, then it is within the will that the self manifests itself most clearly. It is for this reason that we are most distinctly conscious of the self in the activity of the will.

Hitherto, I have discussed from the standpoint of psychology what kind of conscious phenomenon action is; from here onward, however, I wish to clarify the philosophical nature of the will and of action by discussing the questions of where this unifying powerNote of the willNote—which constitutes the foundation of action—originates, and what significance this power possesses within realityNote.

From what, indeed, does this unification of the willNote arise—this unifying of representations from within in accordance with a predetermined end? From the standpoint of scientists who assert that there is no realityNote outside of matter, there is no alternative but to say that this power arises from our physical body. Our body, like that of animals, is an organism that forms a system. Regardless of the presence or absence of mind, an animal organism is capable of performing various orderly movements mechanically within the centers of its nervous system: namely, reflex movements, automatic movements, and furthermore, complex instinctive operations. Since our will originally developed from these unconscious movements, and even today returns to the condition of these unconscious movements when trained, we have no choice but to consider it as the same kind of movement arising on the basis of the identical power. And since the diverse ends of an organism all reduce to the preservation and development of life in the self and its species, the end of our will cannot be anything other than the preservation of life. It is merely that in the will the end is conscious, which makes it appear distinct from the others. Thus, scientists attempt to explain all the various noble spiritual demands in human beings from this singular end of biological life.

However, to seek the origin of the will in material force and to explain the subtle, profound demands of human life merely from the instinct for biological self-preservation is an exceedingly difficult undertaking. Even granting that the development of a noble will is simultaneously accompanied by the flourishing of vital biological functions, the supreme end must reside in the former and not the latter; rather, the latter must be considered as a means to the former. Yet setting aside these debates for a moment, if, as scientists maintain, our will arises from the material operations of the organism, what kind of capacity must we assume matter to possess? There are two ways of conceiving how the purposive movements of an organism arise from matter. One views nature as inherently purposive, holding that, as in the seed of a living creature, matter must potentially contain a purposive force within itself; the other regards matter as possessing merely mechanical forces, asserting that all purposive natural phenomena arise entirely by chance. The perspective of strict scientists leans rather toward the latter; yet I believe that these two views are fundamentally the same mode of thinking, by no means differing at their root. Even in the latter view, one must presuppose that somewhere there exists a force that causes certain fixed, immutable phenomena. In order to produce mechanical movement, one must assume that the force producing it is latent within the physical body. If this can be asserted, why can we not, by the same logic, consider that the purposive force of the organism is latent within matter? Perhaps some might argue that purposive movements of organisms can be explained by simpler laws of physics and chemistry without postulating such a force. Yet if one argues thus, today's laws of physics and chemistry may themselves be explained by still simpler laws. Indeed, since the progress of knowledge is infinite, I believe they must inevitably be explained. When conceived in this manner, truth becomes merely relative. I hold rather the contrary view: placing weight upon synthesis over analysis, I deem it most appropriate to see purposive nature advancing from individual separation to synthesis, unfolding its true meaning step by step.

Furthermore, according to the view of reality I set forth previously, matter is nothing more than a name designated for the invariant relations among conscious phenomena; matter does not generate consciousness, but consciousness creates matter. Even that which is regarded as the most objective mechanical movement is established by virtue of our logical unification, and is by no means separated from the unification of consciousness. Advancing from this to the vital phenomena of living beings, and advancing further to the conscious phenomena of animals, that unification becomes ever more active, multifaceted, and profound. The will is the deepest unifying powerNote of our consciousness, and it is simultaneously the most profound manifestation of the unifying power of reality. That which, viewed from the outside, is merely mechanical movement and the process of vital phenomena is, in its internal true significance, the will. Just as that which was thought to be mere wood or stone is, in its true significance, a Buddha image overflowing with compassion or a guardian Niō brimming with valor, so the so-called natural world is the manifestation of the will, and through our own will we are able to grasp the profound, true meaning of nature. To be sure, if one divides phenomena into internal and external, viewing mental phenomena and physical phenomena as completely separate, such a view may appear to be mere fantasy; yet in the concrete fact of direct experience there is no distinction between internal and external, and such an understanding is, on the contrary, the direct fact itself.

What has been stated above agrees with the view of scientists who hold that the mechanical movement of matter and the purposiveness of organisms share a single root and the same function with the will; yet that which they take as fundamental is completely the reverse. They take material force as fundamental, whereas this view takes the will as fundamental.

According to this conception, whereas earlier I analyzed action into the two elements of will and bodily movement, the relationship between these two is not one of cause and effect, but rather two sides of the same thing. Bodily movement is the expression of the will. That which is viewed from the outside as bodily movement is, when viewed from within, the will.

The willNote, psychologically speaking, is merely a phenomenon of consciousness, yet in its substance I have argued that it is the foundation of realityNote. Let us now discuss in what sense this will is a free activity. Whether the will is free or determined has for long perplexed the minds of scholars. This debate is not only vital for morality, but through it we can also clarify the philosophical nature of the will itself.

First, if we consider what we ordinarily believe, there is no one who does not consider their own willNote to be free. In what one experiences regarding one's own consciousness, within a certain range one can perform a certain act and can also refrain from performing it. That is to say, we believe that within a certain range we are free. It is because of this that sentiments such as responsibility, irresponsibility, pride, remorse, praise, and blame arise. Let us, however, examine this 'within a certain range' a little more closely. Regarding everything that belongs to external things, we cannot freely control it. Even one's own physical body cannot be said to be subject to arbitrary manipulation in every respect. The movement of voluntary muscles seems free, but once stricken by illness, one can no longer move them freely. What can be controlled freely is merely one's own phenomena of consciousness. Yet even regarding the phenomena within our own consciousness, we do not possess the freedom to create new representations out of nothing, nor do we even possess the freedom to recall at any time that which we have once experienced. What is truly thought to be free is solely the operation of connecting representations. That is, how representations are analyzed and how they are synthesized belongs to one's own freedom. Of course, even in this case, there are immutable pre-existent laws governing the analysis and synthesis of representations, so that one cannot act arbitrarily; furthermore, when the connection among representations is unique, or when a certain connection is particularly powerful, we cannot but follow this connection. Only within the scope of the pre-existent laws of representational constitution, where there exist two or more paths for connecting representations and where the strength of these connections is not coercive, do we possess absolute freedom of choice.

Advocates of free will largely base their arguments upon this fact of internal experience. They consider that selecting and determining motives within the aforementioned range belongs entirely to our freedom, that there is no reason beyond ourselves, and that this determination depends upon an occult power called the will, which is independent of external circumstances or internal temperament, habit, and character. That is, they believe that outside the connection of representations there exists a power that governs them. In contrast, those who advocate the determinism of the will generally draw their inferences based upon the observation of facts in the external world. Not a single phenomenon in the universe arises by chance; even the most trivial matter, when investigated closely, invariably possesses an adequate cause. This conception is the foundational thought of all that is called scholarship, and with the advancement of science this thought becomes increasingly secure. Even among natural phenomena that were formerly regarded as mysterious, their causes and effects have been clarified one by one, advancing to the point where they can be calculated mathematically. At present, about the only thing still thought to be without cause is our will. Yet even the will cannot escape beyond this great, immutable law of nature. That people today think the will is free is ultimately because the development of science is still immature, rendering it unable to explain these causes one by one. Furthermore, although voluntary movements in individual instances appear exceedingly irregular and seem at first glance to lack a fixed cause, when the actions of large numbers of people are considered statistically, they are surprisingly orderly; they can by no means be viewed as lacking a fixed cause and effect. These considerations increasingly reinforce the conviction that our will has causes, leading to the conclusion that our will, like all natural phenomena, is governed by the necessary laws of mechanical causality, and that there is no separate occult power called the will.

Which, then, of these two opposing theories is correct? The extreme libertarian, as stated above, believes that within the mind there exists a mysterious faculty that freely determines motives without any cause or reason whatsoever. However, if such a faculty were actually to exist, the will would be an entirely fortuitous phenomenon, having no law of any kind. Conceived thus, freedom of the will would be synonymous with chance. Yet that which is fortuitous is never felt by us to be our freedom; chance is, on the contrary, a force that oppresses us from without. Even if it were a phenomenon arising within one's own mind, if such a completely unforeseen, accidental occurrence were to take place within one's mind, we would be astonished by it, and could never feel it to be our own freedom. For something to be felt as free, it must invariably be accompanied by a certain reason—that is, it must be accompanied by the satisfaction of the self. Freedom without reason is blind freedom; that is to say, it is not freedom, but bondage. Not only that: if the will were indeed an accidental occurrence, we could neither praise nor blame our actions, and there would be no room for responsibility or remorse. Who could feel responsibility for an accidental occurrence? The libertarian posits this theory in order to preserve moral responsibility, yet thereby proves the impossibility of the theory itself.

Next, let us offer a brief critique of the determinist argument. Thinkers of this school believe that because natural phenomena are governed by laws of mechanical necessity, conscious phenomena must likewise be governed by the identical laws. Yet if we consider how the objective laws of natural phenomena originally came to be established, they were established throughout by virtue of the laws of our subjective consciousness: consciousness is not governed by the laws of nature; rather, the laws of nature are governed by consciousness. Therefore, attempting to regulate the laws of the subjective realm of consciousness by means of the laws of the objective natural world is an argument that puts the cart before the horse. To be sure, when conscious phenomena are viewed objectively in psychological terms, such that one mental phenomenon is seen as giving rise to another mental phenomenon, they do appear to follow the law of causality. Yet conscious phenomena that have been objectified are no longer living conscious phenomena, but merely the skeleton of consciousness. Living conscious phenomena in our direct experience never operate in such relations. The activity of consciousness is always intuitive; it is a single unifying activity that synthesizes relations of before and after. When we objectify it, various representations seem to associate and compete; yet in the fact of direct experience, it is simply the development and enrichment of a single system of representations. The development of this system is not determined from without as in the natural world, but unfolds from within. This is indeed the distinctive characteristic of conscious phenomena, something that physical phenomena can never emulate. Natural phenomena and conscious phenomena differ in their fundamental nature; one cannot explain conscious phenomena directly by the laws of natural phenomena.

In short, there nowhere exists a will devoid of all cause or reason, as the libertarian asserts. Such a fortuitous will is by no means felt as free; on the contrary, it undermines our freedom. Yet neither is the will determined by external forces, as the determinist maintains. The determination of the will depends upon the determination of motives, but the determination of motives does not come from without; it comes from within. It arises from the very nature of the self. Because our volitional determination issues from the deepest nature of the self, we feel freedom regarding our actions, and at the same time feel great responsibility for them. Spirit is never governed by mechanical laws like objective nature. Spirit possesses its own laws. It is when spirit operates in accordance with its own laws that it is truly free. Freedom has two meanings: one is freedom synonymous with the total absence of cause—that is, chance; the other is freedom in the sense that one is free from external constraint and acts from oneself. That is to say, it is the meaning of necessary freedom. Freedom of the will is freedom in this latter sense. Here, however, the following question will arise: if acting in accordance with one's own nature is called freedom, then there is nothing among all things that does not act in accordance with its own nature—water flowing and fire burning both accord with their own natures. Why, then, do we regard the others as necessity and designate the will alone as free?

In the so-called natural world, the occurrence of a certain phenomenon is strictly determined by its circumstances. From certain fixed circumstances, only a certain fixed phenomenon is produced, allowing not the slightest room for other possibilities. Natural phenomena all arise in accordance with such laws of blind necessity. In contrast, conscious phenomena do not simply occur; they are phenomena that are conscious. That is to say, not only do they occur, but they know within themselves that they have occurred. And this knowing or being conscious means precisely that they contain other possibilities. Our being conscious of taking something contains on its reverse side the possibility of not taking it. To state it more precisely, consciousness invariably possesses a general character—that is, consciousness contains an ideal element. Without this, it would not be consciousness. And that it possesses these characteristics means that, beyond such an actual occurrence, it possesses yet other possibilities. That it is actual yet contains the ideal, and that it is ideal yet does not depart from the actual, is the distinctive property of consciousness. In truth, consciousness is never governed by another; it always governs the other. Therefore, even if our actions arise by virtue of necessary laws, because we know this, we are not constrained within these actions. Viewed from the standpoint of the ideal that forms the foundation of consciousness, this actuality is merely a particular instance of the ideal—that is, merely a process wherein the ideal realizes itself. The action did not come from without, but emerged from within. Furthermore, because we view actuality as merely an instance of the ideal in this manner, it comes to contain countless other possibilities.

Thus, the freedom of consciousness does not mean freedom because it acts fortuitously in violation of the laws of nature; on the contrary, it is free because it accords with its own nature. It is not free because it acts without reason; it is free because it thoroughly knows its reason. As our knowledge advances, we are able to become ever freer persons. Even when a person is restrained or oppressed by others, because one knows this, one has transcended beyond this oppression. Advancing further, if one deeply attains for oneself the inescapable necessity of the situation, the oppression turns instead into one's own freedom. SocratesNote was a freer person than the Athenians who put him to death by poison. Pascal also said: 'Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking reed. Even if the entire universe were to crush him, he would still be nobler than that which slays him, because he knows that he is dying.'

The ideal element lying at the ground of consciousness—in other words, the unifying activity—as discussed previously in the section on realityNote, is not a product of nature; rather, nature is established by virtue of this unification. This is indeed the infinite power at the foundation of reality, which can never be quantitatively circumscribed. It exists completely beyond the necessary laws of nature. Our will is free because it is the manifestation of this power; it is not subject to the dominion of natural laws.

In observing any phenomenon or occurrence, one may proceed from two vantage points. One is the inquiry into cause or reason—namely, how it occurred and why it had to be so; the other is the inquiry into end—namely, for what purpose it occurred. Suppose, for instance, there is a flower here. If one asks how it came to be, one must say that it arose by virtue of the plant and surrounding circumstances, in accordance with the laws of physics and chemistry; if one asks for what purpose, the answer is that it exists in order to bear fruit. The former is theoretical research that simply investigates the laws of the constitution of things; the latter is practical research that investigates the laws of the activity of things.

In phenomena of the so-called inorganic world, there is the question of why they occurred, but there is no question of for what purpose; that is, one must say there is no end. Yet even in this case, one can say that end and cause are identical. For example, if one strikes a billiard ball upon a table with a certain force in a certain direction, it invariably rolls in a fixed direction; at this moment, there is no end whatsoever within the ball itself. Perhaps the person who struck it had some purpose, but this is not the internal end of the ball itself: the ball is moved necessarily by an external cause. However, viewed from another angle, it is precisely because the ball itself possesses such power of movement that it moves in a fixed direction. In terms of the internal force of the ball itself, it can also be seen as a purposive activity realizing itself. Advancing further to plants and animals, the internal end of the self becomes distinct, and cause and end come to be distinguished. Phenomena occurring in plants and animals, while arising in accordance with the necessary laws of physics and chemistry, are by no means devoid of significance; they are phenomena whose end is the preservation and development of the organism as a whole. In such phenomena, that which arises as the result of a certain cause cannot always be said to be purposive: the end of the whole and a phenomenon of one part may come into collision. It is here that we are compelled to undertake an axiological inquiry into phenomena, asking what kind of phenomenon accords best with the end.

In the phenomena of living organisms, it is not impossible to eliminate this unifying end by regarding it as merely an imaginative addition projected from outside by human beings; that is, vital phenomena can still be regarded as meaningless combinations resulting from an aggregate of several forces. But when it comes to our conscious phenomena, they can never be viewed in such a manner. From the very beginning, conscious phenomena are not combinations of meaningless elements, but a single unified activity. If one were to remove this unifying activity from the operations of thinkingNote, imagination, and willNote, these phenomena would vanish. Regarding these operations, the primary problem is not how they arise, but rather how one ought to think, how one ought to imagine, and how one ought to act. It is here that the studies of logic, aesthetics, and ethics arise.

Among scholars, there are some who attempt to derive the laws of value from the laws of existence. Yet I believe that we cannot derive an axiological judgment of things merely from the fact that this arises from that. From the causal law that a red flower produces such a result or that a blue flower produces such a result, one can never explain why this flower is beautiful and that flower is ugly, nor why one possesses great value while the other does not. For these axiological judgments, there must exist another principle that serves as their standard. In things such as our thinkingNote, imagination, and willNote, once they have arisen as actual facts, however erroneous the thinking, however evil the will, and however clumsy the imagination, they all arise entirely in accordance with their respective causes. The will to murder a person and the will to save a person both arise from certain necessary causes and produce necessary results. In this respect, there is not the slightest superiority or inferiority between the two. It is only when there exists a standard—such as the demand of conscience or the desire for life—that a vast difference in value arises between these two actions. Certain theorists explain that that which confers great pleasure is that which possesses great value, believing that they can thereby derive the laws of value from the laws of cause and effect. Yet such a standard of pleasure is by no means derived from mere causal laws; this too is a standard determined by human desires. The standards of axiological judgment are all determined by the end of the unification of consciousness. All objective natural phenomena are nothing more than the result of abstracting from our intuitive conscious phenomena. In the facts of our direct experience, there is no such thing as mere existence; it invariably embodies value. To make fact primary and value secondary is an abstract view that has already reversed the fundamental and the derivative. In the facts of direct experience—that is, in true realityNote—value is fact, and fact is value. True realityNote is identical with a work of art. In a work of art, the laws of its construction—namely the laws of fact—and the laws of its value are one and the same.

Having already discussed what an axiological inquiry is, I should now like to turn to the question of what the GoodNote is. As stated above, we pass axiological judgments upon our actions; where does the criterion for these axiological judgments lie, what kind of action is goodNote, and what kind of action is evil? These are the ethical problems I propose to examine. Such ethical problems are of paramount importance to us. No human being can stand aloof from them. Both in the East and in the West, ethics has been one of the most ancient of disciplines, and consequently various theories have existed from antiquity. Here, I wish first to outline and critique the major schools in this discipline, thereby clarifying the standpoint of the ethical theory I intend to adopt.

When ethical theories of the past are broadly classified, they fall into two main groups. One consists of heteronomous ethical theories, which seek to place the criterion of good and evil in an authority external to human nature; the other consists of autonomous ethical theories, which seek this criterion within human nature itself. In addition, there is intuitionism; this doctrine encompasses a wide variety of stances, some of which can be classified under heteronomous ethics, while others must be included under autonomous ethics. Here, I shall begin first with intuitionism and proceed successively to the others.

Although there are diverse views within this school, its general tenet is that the moral laws which ought to regulate our conduct are intuitively evident and possess no further justification beyond themselves: what kind of action is good and what kind is evil can be known intuitively, just as we know that fire is hot and water is cold. The goodness or evil of an action is an intrinsic quality of the action itself and cannot be explained by anything else. Indeed, when we reflect upon our daily experience, in judging the goodness or evil of an action we do not deliberate over this or that reason, but judge for the most part intuitively. There exists what is called conscience, which can directly judge the goodness or evil of an action just as the eye discerns the beauty or ugliness of an object. Intuitionism is a doctrine based upon this fact, and is the theory closest to empirical reality. Not only that: holding that the goodness or evil of an action permits no explanation of reasons is exceedingly effective for preserving the supreme majesty of morality.

Yet despite the fact that intuitionism is simple and practically effective, what degree of value does it possess as an ethical theory? That which is held to be intuitively evident in intuitionism is not something like the ultimate end of human nature, but the laws of conduct. Of course, within intuitionism there are two positions: one holds that the goodness or evil of every action is intuitively evident in individual cases, while the other holds that the fundamental moral laws subsuming individual moral judgments are intuitively distinct; in either case, however, the life of intuitionism consists in the claim that there exist certain immediately self-evident laws of conduct. Yet within the moral judgments we pass upon our daily actions—namely the so-called commands of conscience—can we truly discover such immediately self-evident, and consequently precise and non-contradictory, moral laws as the intuitionist claims? First, looking at individual cases, it is evident that such unambiguous judgments do not exist. In particular instances, we may waver in our judgment of good and evil; what we consider right today we may deem wrong tomorrow; and even in identical circumstances, judgments of good and evil differ greatly from person to person. That there exist clear-cut moral judgments in individual cases is something that no person with even a slight spirit of reflection could possibly accept. What, then, of the general case? Do there truly exist such self-evident principles as these theorists maintain? First of all, the fact that what so-called intuitionists put forward as self-evident principles differs from thinker to thinker and never consistently agrees proves that there are no self-evident principles sufficiently universal to be generally recognized. Furthermore, among the duties that the world acknowledges as self-evident, not a single such principle can be found. Filial piety and loyalty are of course taken as natural obligations, yet conflicts and historical transformations constantly arise between them, such that what constitutes true loyalty or true filial piety is by no means clear. Again, if we consider the meanings of wisdom, courage, benevolence, and justice, what kind of wisdom and what kind of courage constitutes true wisdom and true courage? Not all wisdom and courage can be called good; wisdom and courage may, on the contrary, be employed in the service of evil. Benevolence and justice come closest to self-evident principles; yet benevolence cannot be said to be absolutely good at all times and under all circumstances—misguided benevolence may instead bring about disastrous consequences. Nor can it be called self-evident what constitutes true justice: in treating others, for example, what is the right way? Mere equality for all individuals is not necessarily justice; rather, justice accords with each person's worth. Yet if it is to accord with each person's worth, what determines that worth? In short, in our moral judgments we possess not a single self-evident principle such as intuitionists assert. Those propositions that at times appear to be self-evident principles are nothing more than tautologies repeating synonymous words devoid of all content.

As argued above, if intuitionism is unable to prove the intuition of good and evil as it claims, it is of very little value as a philosophical doctrine. But let us suppose for a moment that such intuition exists, and consider what kind of ethical theory intuitionism would become if following the laws given thereby were defined as the Good. Strictly speaking, intuition must be designated as a completely immediate, non-discursive consciousness that cannot be explained by reason—as intuitionists themselves argue—and has no relation to feelings of pleasure and pain or desires of like and dislike. If following such an intuition were the Good, then the Good would be something entirely devoid of meaning for us, and our obedience to it would be mere blind submission. That is to say, moral laws would become an external oppression imposed upon human nature, and intuitionism would become identical with heteronomous ethics. Yet many intuitionists do not assert intuition in such a sense. Some equate intuition with reason—that is, they consider that the fundamental laws of morality are self-evident by virtue of reason. But if stated thus, the Good means to follow reason, and the distinction between good and evil is no longer evident through intuition, but becomes explicable through reason. Other intuitionists equate intuition with immediate pleasure and displeasure, or liking and disliking. But if conceived in this way, the Good is good because it confers a kind of pleasure or satisfaction, which means that the criterion of good and evil shifts to the magnitude of pleasure or satisfaction. Thus, according to the varying meanings given to the term 'intuition,' intuitionism approaches various other ethical theories. Of course, a pure intuitionism must mean an entirely non-discursive intuition; but such an ethical theory, like heteronomous ethics, can never explain why we ought to follow the Good. The ground of morality becomes entirely accidental and meaningless. In truth, that which we actually call moral intuition contains diverse principles: some are entirely heteronomous, deriving from external authority; others derive from reason; and still others derive from emotion and desire. This is precisely why so-called self-evident principles fall into various contradictions and conflicts. It is manifest that one cannot erect a coherent philosophical doctrine upon such confused principles.

Having previously discussed the inadequacy of intuitionism and observed how, depending on the meaning attributed to intuition, it can transform into various differing theories, I wish now to treat of pure heteronomous ethics, namely the authoritarian theory (theory of power). Thinkers of this school focus upon the aspect whereby that which we call moral goodNote diverges on the one hand from the demands of human nature, such as one's own pleasure or satisfaction, and bears the significance of a solemn command; they maintain that moral laws are the commands of an absolute authority confronting us from without, to which we have no choice but to submit, and that the criterion of good and evil is determined entirely by the will of that authority.

The external power conceived in this kind of theory must, of course, naturally possess immense majesty and power over us. Among the authoritarian theories that have appeared in the history of ethics, there are two varieties: royal authoritarian theories based upon the sovereign, and theocratic authoritarian theories based upon GodNote. Theocratic ethics represents the dominant current of Christian ethics centered on ChristNote, as advocated by medieval theologians such as Duns Scotus. According to him, GodNote possesses infinite power over us, and God's will is entirely absolute; the standard of good and evil is determined wholly by God's will: something is the goodNote because God wills it, and evil because God forbids it. The royal authoritarian theory was advocated by seventeenth-century English philosophers such as Hobbes, who argued that human beings are by nature selfish, perpetually inflicting harm upon one another and struggling without end; in order to escape this wretched state and preserve their own personal safety, they entered into a covenant with one another, conferring unlimited power upon the sovereign and pledging submission to him; thus, the criterion of good and evil is determined entirely by the commands of the sovereign. Furthermore, in China, Xunzi's assertion that human nature is evil and that following the way of the ancient sage kings constitutes the Good is likewise a variety of authoritarian theory.

If we reason rigorously from the standpoint of the aforementioned authoritarian theory, what conclusion do we reach? In an authoritarian theory, one cannot explain why we ought to do good—or rather, the very essence of the authoritarian theory is that no explanation can be given. We obey simply because it is an authority. If we obey for some reason, we are no longer obeying for the sake of the authority itself, but for the sake of the reason. Some claim that fear is the most appropriate motive for obeying authority; yet on the reverse side of fear is contained the consideration of one's own personal profit and loss. If one obeys for the sake of one's own interest, one is no longer obeying for the sake of authority. Thinkers like Hobbes have, for this reason, abandoned the standpoint of pure authoritarianism. Again, according to the doctrine of Kirchmann, who recently offered the most fascinating explanation of authoritarianism, whenever we encounter anything possessing immense power—such as a lofty mountain or the vast ocean—we are spontaneously struck by its tremendous force and experience a feeling of awe and agitation; this feeling is neither fear nor pain, but a condition in which the self is captivated by magnificent external things, prostrating before them and becoming absorbed within them. And if this possessor of immense power happens to be a being endowed with a willNote, a feeling of reverence must spontaneously arise within us; that is, we come to obey the commands of this being with an attitude of reverence. Thus, he claims that reverence is the motive for obeying authority. Yet upon careful reflection, when we revere another, we do not revere entirely without cause: we revere a person because that person has realized an ideal that we ourselves are unable to attain. We do not revere merely the person as such, but the ideal. To beasts and birds, neither ŚākyamuniNote nor ConfuciusNote is worth half a copper coin. Therefore, in a strict authoritarian theory, morality must be entirely blind submission. Both fear and reverence must be blind emotions utterly devoid of any meaning. In Aesop's fables, there is a tale of a fawn who, seeing its mother flee in terror at the sound of a dog's bark, asked: 'Mother, you have such a large body, why do you become frightened and flee at the bark of a small dog?' Whereupon the mother deer replied: 'I do not know why, but I simply flee because the sound of a dog is terrifying beyond reason.' An authoritarian theory must hold that such senseless fear is the most appropriate moral motive. If morality were indeed such a thing, then morality and knowledge would be polar opposites, and the most ignorant person would be the most virtuous. For human beings to progress and develop, they would have to cast off the shackles of morality as quickly as possible. Furthermore, however good an action may be, if performed not with the thought of obeying an authority's command, but because one has personally realized within oneself the inescapable necessity of doing it, it would not constitute a moral good deed.

Not only is an authoritarian theory thus incapable of explaining moral motivation, but the so-called moral law itself becomes virtually meaningless, and consequently the distinction between good and evil is left without any standard whatsoever. If we are to submit blindly to authority merely because it is an authority, there are diverse kinds of authority: there is brutal authority based on violence, and there is noble spiritual authority. Yet since obeying either is equally obeying authority, they must be pronounced entirely identical. That is to say, no standard of good and evil can be established at all. To be sure, it may seem that the magnitude or strength of power serves as the criterion; yet the magnitude or strength of power can only be evaluated once that which we hold as our ideal has been established. Between JesusNote and Napoleon, who was the stronger? That depends entirely upon how we define our ideal. If one claims that whoever possesses power in the physical world is the more potent, then the person possessing brute physical force would be the most powerful.

As the monk Saigyō sang in his poem, 'I know not what holy presence dwelleth here, yet tears of gratitude flow unbidden'—the majesty of morality resides precisely in this unfathomable aspect. That the authoritarian theory focused upon this point contains a partial truth; yet that it thereby completely forgot the natural demands of human nature is its profound flaw. Morality is grounded upon the spontaneous nature of humanity, and the reason why we ought to do good must be explained from within human nature itself.

In heteronomous ethics, as stated above, it is ultimately impossible to explain why we must do the GoodNote. The good becomes something entirely devoid of meaning. Thereupon, we are compelled to seek the foundation of morality within human nature itself. We must explain from human nature what the good is and why we must do the good. Such ethics is called autonomous ethics. Of this there are three types: the first takes reason as its foundation and is termed rationalism or intellectualism; the second takes the feelings of pleasure and pain as its foundation and is called hedonismNote; and the third takes the activity of the willNote as its foundation and is called the theory of activity (energetism). First, let us discuss rationalism.

Rational or intellectual ethics (dianoetic ethics) equates moral goodNote and evil, right and wrong, with epistemic truth and falsehood. It holds that the true nature of things is itself the good; that knowing the true nature of things spontaneously illuminates what must be done; and that our duty can be deduced like a geometric truth. Thus, when asked why we must do the good, it replies: because it is the truth. Human beings are endowed with reason, and just as we must follow reason in knowledge, so too must we follow reason in practical action (it should be noted parenthetically that while the term "reason" has various philosophical meanings, here it designates the relationship among abstract concepts in the ordinary sense). On the one hand, opposing views such as Hobbes's that moral laws are arbitrary constructs subject to the sovereign's willNote, this theory asserts that moral law belongs to the nature of things and is eternal and immutable; on the other hand, fearing that if the source of good and evil is sought in sensibility such as perception or feeling, one cannot explain the universality of moral law, thereby destroying the dignity of duty and leaving individual preference as the sole standard, it sought to explain the universality of moral law and establish the dignity of duty upon the universality of reason. This theory is frequently confused with the intuitionism mentioned earlier, but intuition need not necessarily be limited to rational intuition. I believe it is better to consider these two theories separately.

I consider the purest form of rationalism to be the theory of Samuel Clarke. According to Clarke, all relations among things in human affairs are as self-evident as mathematical truths, and from these one can spontaneously know the fitness or unfitness of things. For example, since GodNote is infinitely superior to us, we must submit to Him; or, that which is unjust for another to inflict upon oneself is likewise unjust for oneself to inflict upon another. Discussing why human beings must do the good, Clarke asserts that rational animals must obey reason. At times, he even goes so far as to say that whoever acts contrary to justice is like someone seeking to alter the very nature of things, thereby utterly confusing what "is" with what "ought to be."

While rationalism is commendable in clarifying the universality of moral law and imparting solemnity to duty, it cannot be said to account for the totality of morality. Can the moral law that guides our action truly be known a priori through formal understanding, as its proponents claim? Pure formal understanding can provide only the laws of formal thinking—such as the three laws of thought in logic—but cannot provide any concrete content whatsoever. Proponents are fond of drawing analogies from geometry, but even in geometry, axioms are not clarified merely by formal understanding; they arise from the nature of space. Deductive reasoning in geometry is the application of logical laws to fundamental intuitions regarding the nature of space. In ethics as well, once fundamental principles have been clarified, their application must indeed depend on logical laws; yet those principles themselves are not clarified by the laws of logic. For example, is the moral command "LoveNote thy neighbor as thyself" self-evident through mere understanding? We possess both altruistic and egoistic natures. Why must we take altruism as fundamental? Mere reason alone cannot determine this. Although Clarke claims that fitness and unfitness can be known from the relations among things, relations are merely relations, and judgments of fitness or unfitness do not directly emerge from them. The judgment of fitness or unfitness regarding relations among things arises only when appraised against a given purpose as a standard. It is because there is the purpose of maintaining health that the cold or hot quality of food becomes fit or unfit. Fitness or unfitness is already not a pure epistemic judgment, but an axiological (value) judgment. There must be something sought after, and only then does the judgment of fitness or unfitness arise.

Next, proponents explain why we must do the good by arguing that because we are rational animals, we must follow reason. It is natural that whoever understands reason must follow reason in knowledge. Yet a mere logical judgment and a volitional choice are entirely different things. A logical judgment is by no means necessarily the cause of the willNote. The will arises from feeling or impulse, not merely from abstract logic. The maxim "Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you" would be almost meaningless to us were there no motive of sympathy. If abstract logic could directly become the motive of the will, then the person most adept at reasoning would necessarily be the best person. Yet the facts sometimes contradict this, and no one can deny that an uneducated person is often far better than a person of great knowledge.

Earlier I cited Clarke as the representative of rationalism, but Clarke represents the theoretical aspect of this school; the representative of its practical aspect is the Cynic school. Basing themselves on SocratesNote' equation of virtue with knowledge, this school regarded all passions and pleasures as evil, and held that overcoming them to obey pure reason is the sole good. Yet their so-called reason was merely contrary to passions—a negative reason devoid of any positive content. The purpose of morality was nothing more than overcoming passions and pleasures to preserve the freedom of the spirit. The famous Diogenes is its prime exemplar. After that school came the Stoic school, which advocated the same principle. According to the Stoics, the universe is governed by a single Reason (Logos), and the human essence does not lie outside this reason. To obey reason is to follow the laws of nature, and this is the sole good for human beings. Life, health, and wealth are not goods, nor are poverty, illness, and death evils; rather, inner freedom and tranquility (ataraxia/apatheia) are the supreme good. Consequently, like the Cynics, they rejected all passions and strived purely for passionlessness (Apathie). Epictetus is a prime example.

When pure reason, in utter opposition to desire, is made the purpose of human nature as in the aforementioned schools, just as it can provide no moral motive theoretically, so too can it offer no positive content to the good practically. One is left with no choice but to think, as the Cynics and Stoics did, that merely conquering passions is the sole good. However, our need to conquer passions exists precisely because there is some greater purpose to be sought. To say that restraining passions merely for the sake of restraining them is the good—nothing could be more absurd.

Compared with heteronomous ethics, rationalism advances a step further in attempting to explain the GoodNote from within natural human nature. However, taking mere formal reason as its foundation, as stated above, it can neither provide any content to the good nor possess the power to move the willNote. What moves the will is emotion and impulse. If human beings are genuinely to be brought to do the good, appeal must be made to emotion, which serves as the immediate motive of the will. For this reason, it is a natural tendency that an ethical theory should arise that takes the satisfaction of desires and feelings as the foundation of morality, judging good and evil by feelings of pleasure and pain. This is termed hedonismNote. Of this hedonism there are two kinds: the one is called egoistic hedonism, and the other universalistic (public) hedonism.

Egoistic hedonismNote regards one's own pleasure as the sole end of human life, holding that even when we act for the sake of others, in reality we are seeking our own pleasure. The Cyrenaic school founded by Socrates' disciple Aristippus in ancient Greece, and later the school of EpicurusNote, belong to this type; in modern times, the theories of Hobbes and Helvetius belong here. Aristippus placed the criterion of good and evil in immediate sensory pleasure, taking momentary pleasure as the highest good. With Epicurus, although he was identical in seeking pleasure, he did not regard transient bodily pleasure as the highest, but rather spiritual, enduring pleasure, defining happiness as an untroubled state free from pain (ataraxia). Denying the intervention of GodNote and placing no faith in the immortality of the soul, he maintained that the purpose of life lies in obtaining peaceful pleasure in this present world. Furthermore, wisdom is necessary to attain this pleasure; he believed that only through wisdom, ridding oneself of turbulent passions and moderating one's desires, can tranquility of mind be achieved. The most famous maxim of Epicurus is "Live unnoticed" (lathe biōsas). By this, he even sought to avoid family life as much as possible.

Next, let us discuss universalistic hedonism, namely the so-called utilitarianism. While this doctrine is fundamentally identical in principle to the former, it does not take individual pleasure as the highest good, but establishes "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" as the standard of goodness. That is, it holds that individual good is determined by the happiness of society as a whole. According to BenthamNote, the chief proponent of utilitarianism, our motives are egoistic; however, self-interest and the interest of others coincide, so that promoting the happiness of others is itself promoting one's own happiness. Bentham made no distinction between higher and lower pleasures, determining their value solely by quantity—duration, intensity, propinquity, and so forth—and declaring that morality is nothing other than the felicific calculus. Later, however, John Stuart Mill introduced qualitative distinctions into pleasure, stating that it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be SocratesNote dissatisfied than a fool satisfied, thus ranking spiritual pleasures above physical ones. Furthermore, among modern utilitarians, some apply biological evolutionary theory, asserting that the good is that which aids the development of life and evil is that which impairs it; feelings of pleasure in human beings have arisen in the course of biological evolution in accompaniment with actions that facilitate life's evolution; therefore, aiming at the greatest happiness of the greatest number directly promotes the advancement of human life. Herbert Spencer is the typical representative of this view. To characterize these thinkers' theories in a word: Bentham's is the purest utilitarianism; Mill's broke the fundamental premise of utilitarianism in attempting to explain the facts; and Spencer's may be said to have brought it to its culmination. Universalistic hedonism is far healthier than egoistic hedonism and accords exceedingly well with the scope of today's accepted morality. Yet if, as in the former doctrine, one's own pleasure is the sole end, one cannot explain the duty to advance the happiness of others. Both Bentham and Mill argue strenuously that one's own pleasure coincides with the pleasure of others, but I believe such coincidence can never be proved as an empirical fact.

Having thus outlined the main tenets of hedonism, let us now turn to its critique. First, let us examine its fundamental premise that pleasure is the sole end of human life. Is pleasure truly the sole objective of our actions? At first glance, it might appear that everyone avoids pain and seeks pleasure, but a careful examination reveals that this proposition is by no means factual. Pleasure is an affective state accompanying the satisfaction of a desire; it is not the desire itself. Desire points directly toward an external object; just as a starving person desires food, desire aims straight at its object. We do not seek the object in order to obtain pleasure; rather, because we seek the object, we obtain pleasure as the outcome of satisfaction. We frequently brave various hardships and suffering in order to attain the object of our aspiration. One who loves honor treasures fame even at the cost of life; parents who loveNote their child sacrifice themselves for the child's welfare. Such actions are not performed from anticipating future pleasure, as hedonist theorists claim. Passion or impulse directly becomes the cause of the act. If pleasure were the sole end, then once pleasure ceased to be felt, no demand should arise. Yet the facts are quite otherwise. Even when, through habitual repetition, pleasure ceases to be felt, the drive remains intact. A dipsomaniac's crave for alcohol is not for the pleasure of drinking, but stems from an uncontrollable compulsion. Proponents claim that the distinction between good and evil arises from feelings of pleasure and pain, but in reality it is the reverse: because something is good, we feel pleasure; it is not good because it is pleasurable. To assert that the goodness or badness of an action should be determined by feelings of pleasure is an argument that inverts cause and effect. Mill's admission of qualitative distinctions in pleasure is itself a confession that the idea of good and evil does not arise from feelings of pleasure. Mill's so-called higher pleasures are not determined by feelings of pleasure, but are derived from the observation of moral conduct; they are never determined by the mere magnitude of pleasure.

The above remarks examined hedonism assuming its foundational principle were correct; yet even granting this, hedonism cannot provide an accurate standard for determining the value of our actions. Pleasure is an extremely subjective matter, differing according to individual constitution and circumstance, and no fixed standard can be established. Theorists speak of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but comparing the pleasures of a multitude of individuals and calculating the aggregate total is entirely impossible. Not only can we not determine the pleasure of society as a whole, we cannot even determine the pleasure of an individual's lifetime. Pleasure is felt only momentarily; pleasure retained in memory is not real pleasure; when we compare past pleasures, we are in truth comparing present feelings. Bentham envisioned a felicific calculus, but this is something that could never be practically implemented. Granting even further that the calculation of pleasure were possible, making pleasure one's end does not directly result in our happiness; aiming at pleasure rather renders us unhappy. When good and evil are determined by pleasure and pain, moral motivation can be nothing other than self-interest. No matter how much one preaches public pleasure, once one maintains that caring for others is for the sake of one's own advantage, the moral motive is nothing other than self-interest. When self-interest is the motive, promoting one's own happiness is more direct and certain than advancing the happiness of others. Therefore, when self-interest is made the motive of morality, one inevitably arrives at egoistic hedonism. Yet according to egoistic hedonism, as desires increase, one feels pain more frequently, until one finally arrives at the conclusion that eradicating desire to attain tranquility of mind is the supreme good. It is precisely for this reason that Epicurus, who made pleasure the end of life, ended up concurring with the ideal of the Stoics who departed from the diametrically opposite principle.

Certain hedonists may nevertheless contend that even those impulses we consider today to be natural desires not aiming at pleasure were originally formed through feelings of pleasure in the course of an individual's lifetime or biological evolution. They might argue that initially one desired the object to obtain pleasure, but through the laws of association ended up desiring the object itself, just as a miser comes to love money for its own sake. But in the experiences of infancy or the life of lower animals, did they truly aim at pleasure at first? An infant crying for milk, or a young bird catching insects, acts from instinctive impulse, never aiming at pleasure. As evolutionary biologists maintain, as a consequence of the struggle for existence, organisms possessing impulses that felt pleasure survived, and eventually came to exhibit species-specific instincts.

As argued above, although hedonism comes closer to natural human nature than rationalism, according to this theory the distinction between good and evil is determined merely by feelings of pleasure and pain; hence moral motivation inevitably becomes egoistic. Moreover, when the purpose of human life is placed in pleasure, human life completely loses its meaning. We by no means live for the sake of pleasure. Were there a person whose sole aim in life was mere pleasure, such a person would be contrary to true human nature.

Having already discussed various views concerning the GoodNote and pointed out their inadequacies, I believe what constitutes the genuine conception of the good has spontaneously become clear. When, as in heteronomous ethics, the standard of good and evil is sought outside our consciousness, good and evil become entirely devoid of meaning. The standard of good and evil must be sought within our consciousness. Furthermore, when mere formal cognitive faculties such as perception or reason are made the foundation of morality, as discussed earlier, one can neither know the content of the good nor provide a motive that moves the willNote. The standard of morality must be sought within our affective and volitional life (the realm of feeling and will). Yet even in seeking it within our affective and volitional life, we must not, as does hedonismNote, directly seek the standard of good and evil in feelings of pleasure and pain. Feelings of pleasure and displeasure are not the will itself; they are merely consequences accompanying the activity of the will. The motive of volitional activity is a desire directly directed toward an object. Innate demands such as impulse and instinct must be said to be far more fundamental than feelings of pleasure and pain.

It is therefore clear that the explanation of what the good is must be sought in the nature of the will itself. The willNote is the fundamental unifying activity of consciousness, and is directly also the activity of realityNote. The will moves by virtue of its own internal demands. When the will satisfies its demands, that is, when consciousness achieves unity, we feel pleasure; it is not that we satisfy our demands because we feel pleasure. The development and completion of the will is itself our happiness. The activity of the will is our goal. And if the activity of the will is indeed the unification of our consciousness, then the GoodNote signifies the unification of consciousness, that is, the realization of our ideal. When the will attains its consummate development—in other words, when the fundamental unifying powerNote of the will is fully realized—we reach the acme of the good. An ethical theory based upon such a fundamental ideal is called the theory of activity (energetism).

This theory originated with PlatoNote and AristotleNote. Aristotle in particular systematically organized an ethics upon this foundation. In modern times, SpinozaNote and HegelNote also belong to this school, and in contemporary times Friedrich Paulsen has advocated it. According to Plato, the human soul has three parts—appetite, spirit, and reason—corresponding to the virtues of temperance, courage, and wisdom; when these three are harmoniously unified, the virtue of justice arises, and the activity of this harmonized spirit is the highest good. Aristotle held that all things have their respective ends, and the realization of their end constitutes the good; the human good consists in the activity of reason, which is the function unique to human beings, and when this activity is consummately manifested, it is termed happiness. Aristotle's so-called happiness (eudaimonia) is entirely different in nature from the pleasure (hedonē) of hedonismNote. The former designates the complete state of unity of consciousness arising as the result of vital energetic activity, rather than merely passive feelings of pleasure and pain as in the latter. Paulsen likewise strictly distinguishes the two, designating the happiness of energetism as objective happiness, the consciousness of normal spiritual activity, and the happiness of hedonism as subjective happiness, which is a mere feeling of pleasure. The theory of activity is rooted in the reality of human nature, points to the positive content of the GoodNote, and satisfies the sincere demand of our being. We can blindly obey neither external authority nor abstract reasoning. We have no choice but to submit to the voice of demand arising from the deepest depths of our heart. This inner voice possesses tremendous power over us, and in human life there is nothing more solemn than this.

Now, if the GoodNote is the realization of an ideal and the satisfaction of a demand, we must explain whence this demand and ideal arise, and what nature the good possesses. As stated when discussing the willNote earlier, this demand and ideal are nothing other than the activity of the unifying powerNote lying at the foundation of consciousness. Consciousness is originally a unified system, and each conscious phenomenon is an aspect of this unified whole. The progress and development of conscious phenomena is the self-development and self-realization of this unified system. When the whole of our system of consciousness manifests in one of its parts, the power seeking to restore the whole begins to operate; this is demand and will. A demand is an incomplete state of consciousness that possesses the whole within a part; an ideal is the anticipation of this complete whole. Therefore, the good is nothing other than the development and completion of the internal unity of our spirit—namely, that which SpinozaNote called self-preservation (Spinoza stated: "Virtue is nothing else than acting according to the laws of one's own proper nature").

Here the concept of the GoodNote approaches the concept of the beautiful. Beauty is felt when an object is realized in accordance with its ideal. To be realized in accordance with an ideal means that nature fully manifests its complete essence. The good is likewise felt when the will fully manifests its essence. The Greeks identified the beautiful and the good; their ethical concepts were all aesthetic concepts. PlatoNote even equated the culmination of the good with the intuition of beauty. This idea is most brilliantly manifested in Plato.

Viewed from another perspective, the concept of the GoodNote also coincides with the concept of realityNote. As discussed previously, the development and completion of a unified whole is the fundamental mode of the realization of all reality. In spiritual reality—that is, in conscious phenomena—this development and completion is directly the satisfaction of one's own demand, which is the good. The good means the development and completion of spiritual reality. In this sense, reality is itself the good. There is no good apart from reality, and no reality apart from the good. SpinozaNote's proposition that reality is perfection (virtue) (Ethics, Part II, Definition 6) carries this precise meaning (in medieval philosophy too, there is the dictum: "Whatever exists is good," omne ens est bonum).

Previously, I discussed what the GoodNote must be and provided a general conception of goodness; now, I wish to discuss what the human good is for us. Even granting that the good is the satisfaction of self-demands, there are various levels of demands within us, ranging from physical desires to spiritual demands. The question thus arises: which demand's satisfaction constitutes our good, and what constitutes the good of our whole self?

Not a single phenomenon of our consciousness exists in isolation; each is necessarily established through relationships with others. Even a single moment of consciousness is already by no means simple; it contains infinite elements and infinite relationships. Consciousness is a single system like an organism. "Self" is the name given to the unity of this entire system.

Seen in this light, our demands never arise in isolation. They inevitably emerge in relation to others. Our good does not mean the satisfaction of some isolated, single demand; it must designate the satisfaction of the unifying demand of our self as a whole. Our conscience is precisely this conscious function of harmonious unification.

That harmony is the good was the thought of PlatoNote. Plato compared the good to music, taking the harmony of the soul as goodness. AristotleNote's "Golden Mean" is likewise this. Furthermore, in modern times Shaftesbury took harmonious unity as the essence of the good: when feelings are harmoniously unified aesthetically it is called beauty, and when morally harmoniously unified it is called the good. No one will dispute that harmonious unity is the good. But what kind of harmony is the good? Does it mean a mere state of quietude? Is the good, as the Stoic and Epicurean schools held, a passionless, tranquil state wherein all desires are extinguished and the mind is unmoved? Our conscious system is not a dead machine; it is a living organism. No matter how much we may strive to maintain peace of mind, we cannot suppress the internal demands that arise one after another. Damming up our spiritual demands is like damming a torrent: though one may temporarily calm its waves, its force is not diminished, and in the end it breaches the embankment and triggers a catastrophic flood. If having no demands in one's heart and stirring no waves were the good, then an imbecile whose activity is minimal would have to be the best person. Our good is not such a negative good; it must be a positive good. That the fundamental unifying powerNote of the conscious system displays its magnificent capacity in every direction, stirring infinite waves across every dimension, while thoroughly maintaining its complete unity—this is the true good. Harmony becomes good not in standstill, but in activity. The good means the harmony of the powerful activity of the spirit. A person who is indifferent and effortlessly rejects desires cannot necessarily be called a great and good person; only one who possesses abundant passions yet thoroughly unifies them, harboring a great loveNote for GodNote and great sympathy for humankind, can truly be called a good person. This was also GoetheNote's meaning when he described Mephistopheles as "part of that power which eternally wills evil yet eternally works the good." Precisely because there are powerful passions like those of a demon, great good can be achieved. Just as Aristotle said that to be angry at the right things and at the right time is good, so every activity of our spirit can become good, and to govern and master other activities therefrom is also good.

In his famous Republic, PlatoNote compared the structure of the human soul to that of the state: the state has three classes—rulers, guardians (soldiers), and producers (farmers and merchants)—and the human soul has three faculties: reason, spirit, and appetite. Reason corresponds to the rulers, spirit to the soldiers, and appetite to the producers. Just as the complete harmony of the state—namely, justice—is realized when the rulers govern the state by reason, the soldiers defend it by courage, and the producers labor in their vocations through appetite, so too is justice of the spirit realized in the human soul when reason governs appetite and spirit assists reason. To distinguish appetite and reason so rigidly and grant governing authority to reason, as Plato did, may seem somewhat overly intellectualistic; yet in valuing the unifying powerNote of the spirit, we must concur. The unifying power of the spirit is the center of the organization of the human soul, the center of personalityNote. The purpose of the willNote lies in the maintenance and development of this unifying power. If our good is the satisfaction of the demands of the will, then the good lies in the maintenance and development of such personality, that is, this unifying power.

The power of personalityNote referred to here does not signify merely natural physical forces like the vital forces of plants and animals, nor does it denote an unconscious capacity such as instinct. It is the unifying powerNote of consciousness, self-consciously awakened at the center of consciousness. KantNote termed this the autonomy (Autonomie) of the willNote. Our good lies in the maintenance and development of this personality—in the realization of personality. Our greatest demand lies directly in the manifestation of our authentic selfhood. Our good is not something outside of us; it is within us. In doing good, we need not receive any reward from without; the very realization of our own personality is itself our greatest reward. The distinction between good and evil is not determined by the properties of external objects, but by the nature of the unifying power of our inner mind. To do good in order to obtain divine reward from GodNote is already not good; it is selling oneself. The good possesses within itself the reason why it is good. Kant's so-called absolute good designates this power of personality, that is, the autonomy of the will. The power of personality, namely the fundamental unifying power of consciousness, is not merely subjective activity. As stated when discussing the nature of realityNote earlier, it is the unifying power of the union of subject and object, the substance of the universe. Our personal good is the realization of the truth of the universe—the manifestation of the one reality appearing in a particular form according to circumstance.

Because our good is the realization of such a magnificent power, its demand is exceedingly solemn. KantNote likewise remarked: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."

To summarize what has been discussed above: the GoodNote means that which satisfies the internal demands of the self, and the greatest demand of the self is the fundamental unifying powerNote of consciousness—namely, the power of personalityNote; therefore, the realization of personality is our supreme good. From this conception, I believe we can determine what kind of action good action is.

From the above reflection, it is first of all clear that all good action is action that takes personalityNote as its end. Personality is the foundation of all value, and throughout the universe there is nothing more precious than this. We can replace it with nothing else. Good action must be action that directly operates centering upon this personality.

According to KantNote, things have their value determined from without and thus possess only relative value; but our willNote determines its own value and possesses absolute value. We must never treat it as a means to an end, but must always treat it as an end in itself (the second formulation of the Categorical Imperative). In Christianity as well, it is taught: "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Matthew 16:26) (ChristNote). In whatever we do, we must act with this personality as our foundation. Doing good also arises from the demand of personality. Doing good in order to receive the love of GodNote or to secure blessings in the afterlife already treats personality as a means to another end, and cannot be called true good conduct. True good conduct must be action undertaken inevitably, driven by the deepest, natural, heartfelt demand of the self. Our duty is nothing other than our duty toward our own personality; that we consider deceiving others to be evil is not so much from fear of being deceived by others, but rather because it deceives oneself and denies one's own personality.

Expressions such as "the internal necessity of the self" or "the natural, authentic demand" often court misunderstanding. Some might think that licentiousness, disregarding social rules and failing to restrain one's passions, is the natural outpouring of authenticity. But such individuals do not act out of the demand of the true personalityNote of the self; they are slaves to passion. To act according to the demands of the personality of the self means to obey the demand of the unifying power at the center of the self. Far from being licentious and weak, it is on the contrary an undertaking of intense struggle and trial.

To follow the sincere internal demand of the self—that is, to realize the true personalityNote of the self—does not mean setting up the subject in opposition to the object and striving to subjugate external things to the self. On the contrary, it means negating the self and uniting with the object. As discussed earlier, true personality is the unifying power of the union of subject and object; the self and the object are not mutually antithetical, but cooperate to constitute true realityNote. Therefore, if one seeks to realize the personality of the self, one cannot do so apart from the object; only in uniting with the object can one realize the true self. In scholarship, in art, and in morality alike, only when one submerges the self and assimilates into the object can one achieve the full activity of the self. A sincere demand is a demand for truth. Truth means the union of subject and object. The manifestation of this power of subject-object union on the level of feeling is called loveNote. Love is the feeling of subject-object union. This is true not only when a human relates to another human, but also when a painter relates to nature.

In his famous Symposium, PlatoNote stated that love is the desire of that which lacks something to return to its original state of wholeness. LoveNote is the affect desiring the union of subject and object. A sincere demand operates driven by this love. The demand to realize the personality of the self is directly this affective sentiment of love. Love benefits others while at the same time completing the self; the power of love is that which unifies others and self. Love and reverence are the sole motives of moral action. Good action must be an action of love. The love of GodNote and the love of neighbor are the sole fountainheads of good action. When we perform good action moved by love, we feel no pain and experience no restraint; with complete freedom and spontaneity, we do good following the desires of our heart. It is as Paul said: "Love is the fulfilling of the law" (Romans 13:10), and "Yet not I, but ChristNote liveth in me" (Galatians 2:20); and as ConfuciusNote said: "At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing the square."

In explaining good action that takes personalityNote itself as its end, I first indicated from what kind of motive good action must arise; now, I must discuss what kind of end such action possesses. What was discussed previously was, so to speak, the form of the GoodNote; what is now to be discussed is the content of the good.

PersonalityNote, which is the unifying powerNote of consciousness and concurrently the unifying power of realityNote, is first realized within us as individuals. At the foundation of our consciousness lurks a certain unique quality that defies exhaustive analysis; through this, each person's individuality is forged. This individuality encompasses our whole personality, and our activities of knowledge, feeling, and willNote all emanate from it. The development of individuality is the realization of our personality. The manifestation of the power of personality in us as individuals is called individual good. The consummation of our spiritual activities and the fulfillment of each individual's innate natural endowments constitutes the purpose of individual good. Because individual good is determined by each person's innate endowments, it is not uniform: for one person as a scholar, for another as an artist, and for yet another as an entrepreneur, manifesting one's own distinctive excellence is one's respective good. Not everyone can be a genius, but each person possesses their own natural gifts. One who fulfills them is one who has attained the purpose of life. People often think that doing the same work as others is goodness, but this is by no means so. Rather than someone who toils at work unsuited to them and busies themselves vainly for others, I believe that one who skillfully manifests their own true colors is truly great.

However, what I refer to here as individual good is different from self-interest or selfish desire. Individualism and egoism must be strictly distinguished. True individualism means that each person develops their unique gifts and realizes their true self. Only when each person manifests their unique excellence does society make progress. A society that ignores the individual can never be called a healthy society.

The virtue most essential to individual good is a powerful, resolute willNote. A figure such as Ibsen's Brand is the ideal of individual morality. In contrast, someone with a weak will, no matter how many other virtues they may possess, can never fulfill themselves. However, individual good is only one part of the good; it cannot be taken as the whole of goodness. Even to complete individual good, one must enlist the aid of social good. Our conscious system is by no means confined to individual consciousness. There exists something that may be called social consciousness, of which our individual consciousness is merely a single element. Language, customs, habits, and institutions are all manifestations of social consciousness. Our personal life is established entirely through them (refer to the theories of social psychology; Wilhelm Wundt's Völkerpsychologie is one example). Consciousness that truly bears no relation whatsoever to social consciousness is nothing more than the consciousness of a madman.

While no one can deny such facts, whether this collective consciousness exists in the same sense as individual consciousness, and whether it can be regarded as a single personalityNote, is a subject of debate. However, I believe that we can recognize the unity of collective consciousness in the exact same sense as the unity of our individual consciousness. Just as our individual consciousness is established through the unifying power of individual consciousness, so social consciousness is established through the unifying power of social consciousness. Between the two there is merely a quantitative difference of scale, with no qualitative difference whatsoever. Our body is an organism, and each organ is composed of independent cells; the body is the unity of these cells. Society too is an organism, and individuals are its cells. Even what we call our individual spirit is not a simple, indivisible substance, but a collection of cells. It is in no way different from society being composed of individuals as its cells.

Since there thus exists social consciousness of which our individual consciousness is a part, the greater part of our demands are social. If we were to remove altruistic demands (loveNote) from our desires, our personality would become almost entirely empty. Our self is not something confined strictly to our own physical body. A mother's self resides within her child, and a loyal retainer's self resides within his sovereign. In proportion as one's personality becomes greater, one's demands become increasingly social.

Let us now briefly describe the hierarchy of social goods. There are various levels of social consciousness. The smallest and most immediate among them is the family; the family is the first instance of our personality being socially united. The familial relation is not merely a physical relation, but a spiritual one. Strengthening the unity of the family and promoting its happiness constitutes familial good. The foundation of familial good lies in the union of husband and wife. The union of spouses does not consist merely in the satisfaction of sexual desire, but in a spiritual union. Just as the masculine character is not the complete archetype of humanity, neither is the feminine character the complete archetype. Only when the two sexes mutually complement each other can the complete development of personalityNote take place.

However, the development of our social consciousness is not restricted to small groups such as the family. Our spiritual and material life is formed entirely within various social groups. The greatest among these diverse social bodies and the most powerful unified whole is the state. The state is an independent social organism, the realization of moral good. It is what HegelNote termed the Objective Spirit. The state establishes law and maintains order through sovereign power, protecting the activities of individuals while encouraging various cultural undertakings to assist the development of personalityNote. The purpose of the state does not lie merely in maintaining legal order, but in protecting the personality of the individual and advancing their capacities. The state exists for the individual, and the individual exists for the state. Sacrificing one's life for the state is for the sake of the development and completion of one's own greater personality. Furthermore, when the state punishes a criminal, it is neither for revenge nor merely for social security; it is because personality possesses an inviolable dignity.

The state is at present the greatest manifestation of a unified collective consciousness; yet our personal development cannot halt here, demanding something still greater. It demands the realization of a universal human consciousness. This idea already appeared in Paul's Christianity (ChristNote) and in the Stoic school. However, this ideal is not easily realized. Today is still an age of armed peace.

Tracing the path of human development from the dawn of distant history, the state is not the ultimate end of humanity. Human development possesses a coherent meaning and purpose, and each state merely undertakes a part thereof. The ultimate end of humanity lies in the unification of all humankind—namely, the establishment of a world community. However, genuine cosmopolitanism does not mean that individual states disappear; it means that each state becomes increasingly robust, manifesting its own distinctive genius, and contributing to world history.

The GoodNote, in a word, is the realization of personalityNote. Viewed from within, it is the satisfaction of sincere demands, namely the unification of consciousness, reaching at its utmost limit a state wherein self and other are mutually forgotten and subject and object submerge into one another. Viewed from without, it advances from individual good to social good, culminating in the realization of a universal human personality. The question that arises here is whether the personal good that seeks internal satisfaction following the sincere demands of the self, and the objective good that aims at the good of the state or of all humankind, always coincide. Does that which lives in inward sincerity, granting tranquil satisfaction to the soul, always deserve to be called a great good in actual fact as well? That is to say, the question is whether these two interpretations of the good will always coincide.

Inferring first from the theory of realityNote discussed previously, I assert without hesitation that these two perspectives by no means contradict or collide with one another. Originally there is no distinction between inner and outer in phenomena; both subjective consciousness and objective fact are merely two aspects of one and the same reality. The unity of subjective consciousness is directly the unity of objective fact. The demand of our willNote is directly the demand of objective fact. The more we reach the authentic reality of the self, the more we reach the true reality of objective facts. Our true self is the substance of the universe. When we reach the authentic reality of the self, we unite with the substance of the universe. Therefore, the satisfaction of our internal demands is directly the realization of objective reality. The two must necessarily coincide (I have not yet discussed evil, but viewed from an objective standpoint, falsehood, ugliness, and evil are necessary for the constitution of reality, arising from what may be called dialectical or antithetical principles).

According to Saint AugustineNote, there is originally no such thing as evil in the world: nature created by GodNote is entirely good, and evil is merely a privation of essence (privatio boni). Furthermore, God created this universe like a beautiful poem, interweaving opposing elements. From such a perspective, viewed objectively, the good must be that which maintains the order of all reality and aids its development. The good is the satisfaction of the demands of reality. Yet this demand of reality is nothing other than our own internal demand. The demand of all reality manifesting in our soul is precisely our deepest demand. Reasoning thus, the satisfaction of internal demands and the development of objective reality are one and the same. When we thoroughly penetrate to our deepest true self, the two completely coincide. People often claim to live in self-sincerity while performing actions that contradict the objective good. They, in the first place, disdain external efficacy, considering it noble to accomplish no enterprise for society. But this is merely the utterance of a coward lacking the power of subject-object union. An enterprise in itself is certainly not the good; it is merely a vessel housing the spirit. Yet when one is truly filled within, that spirit spontaneously overflows and manifests without, inevitably accomplishing great works. Consider figures like ChristNote and Shakyamuni BuddhaNote—did not their works benefit all humankind across thousands of years, far beyond a single nation? Sincerity without works is not true sincerity. Works are the yardstick of good conduct. However, by works I do not mean material enterprises alone; spiritual enterprises are far greater good actions. Someone once remarked that bringing a single person to goodness is a greater enterprise than enriching ten thousand people. Again, there are those who consider it sincerity to execute whatever they personally believe without heed to the counsel of others. The "sincerity" of such people is merely selfish obstinacy. True sincerity means forgetting both self and other and uniting with objective truth. If one seeks wealth or status as instruments to assist good conduct, these are merely means to good conduct and not good conduct itself; they cannot be compared with true good conduct itself, no matter how small. Next, let us consider the second case. Even if a motive is good, it cannot necessarily be called good in fact. People frequently say that an individual's sincerity and the supreme good of humanity in general can collide. But I believe those who say this do not rightly understand the word "sincerity." If the word sincerity is used in the sense of the deepest demand of the whole spirit, what these people say is scarcely factual. Our sincere demands are not something fabricated by us; they are facts of nature. Just as the root of the human mind contains universal elements in truth and beauty, so too in goodness it contains a universal element. Just as when Faust, after great anguish over human life, returned late at night from a walk in the fields to his solitary study, this feeling spontaneously begins to stir when the night is quiet and the mind is calm (GoetheNote, Faust, Part I, Study). Setting aside beings whose foundation of consciousness is entirely different from ours, any human being endowed with the reason common to all humanity must inevitably think and seek identically. To be sure, humanity's greatest demand may in some cases remain a mere potentiality and fail to operate as an actuality; yet even in such cases, it is not that the demand is absent, but that it is obscured—the self does not know its true self.

For the reasons stated above, I believe that our deepest demand and our greatest purpose spontaneously coincide. As we discipline ourselves within and attain the true substance of the self, we spontaneously engender without a unified loveNote for all humanity and come to accord with the supreme good end; this is what is called perfect, true good conduct. Viewed from one perspective, such perfect good conduct seems an extremely arduous task, yet viewed from another perspective, it is something everyone ought to be capable of. Morality does not seek what lies outside the self; it merely discovers what is already within the self. People often confuse the essence of the good with its external shell, thinking that unless one accomplishes some monumental world-historic enterprise, it cannot be the greatest good. However, the kind of enterprise is determined by each person's ability and circumstances, and no two persons can accomplish the same work. Yet however different our enterprises may be, we can work with the same spirit. Even in the smallest enterprise, a person who always works from love for humanity must be called one who is realizing a magnificent human personality. Raphael's noble and graceful character may have found its most fitting material of realization in the Madonna, but Raphael's character is manifested not only in the Madonna, but in every painting he created. Even if Raphael and Michelangelo had chosen the identical subject, Raphael would express Raphael's character and Michelangelo would express Michelangelo's character. The substance of art and morality resides in the spirit, not in external things.

In conclusion, let me add a word. While the good can be explained theoretically in many ways, in practice there is only one true good: it consists entirely in knowing the true self. Our true self is the substance of the universe; knowing the true self not only unites us with the good of humanity in general, but merges us with the substance of the universe and brings us into mystical communion with the divine will of GodNote. Both religionNote and morality truly culminate here. And the way to know the true self and unite with God lies solely in directly attaining the power of subject-object union. To attain this power, we must completely slay this false self, dying once to the desires of this world and resurrecting thereafter (as Muhammad said: "Paradise lies beneath the shadow of swords"). Only in this way can we truly attain the state of the union of subject and object. This is the ultimate secret of religion, morality, and art. In Christianity it is called rebirth, and in Buddhism it is called seeing into one's true nature (kenshō). There is an old tale that when Pope Benedict XI sent a messenger to Giotto asking for a specimen of his work to prove his painterly skill, Giotto simply drew a single circle with a free hand and gave it to him. In morality, we must attain this single circle of Giotto.

The religiousNote demand is a demand directed toward the self; it is a demand concerning the life of the self. It is the demand wherein our self, while awakening to its own relative and finite nature, simultaneously yearns to unite with an absolute and infinite power and thereby attain eternal true life. As Paul declared, "I live; yet not I, but ChristNote liveth in me," it is the profound sentiment that desires to nail the totality of carnal life to the cross and live solely through GodNote. Genuine religionNote seeks a transformation of the self, a fundamental renewal of life. As Christ said, "He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me," so long as there remains even the slightest lingering sentiment of self-reliance, it cannot yet be called a truly religious spirit.

Needless to say, to pray to GodNote for worldly benefits does not constitute a true religious spirit; nor is the recitation of the Nembutsu solely for the purpose of rebirth in the Pure Land. Thus it is recorded in the *Tannishō*: "The Nembutsu uttered while striving by one's own heart to cultivate the karma for rebirth is likewise performed through self-effort." Furthermore, in Christianity as well, merely relying upon divine aid or fearing divine retribution does not represent true Christianity. All such attitudes are nothing more than disguised variants of self-interest. Not only this, but I believe that even the claim made by many today—that religion exists for the sake of one's peace of mind—is perhaps mistaken. It is precisely because people entertain such notions that they extinguish the spirit of enterprising activity and convince themselves that a passive life of meager desires and quiet detachment captures the true meaning of religion. We do not seek religion for the sake of peace of mind; peace of mind is merely a result that flows from religion. The religious demand is a great, irrepressible demand of life itself that cannot be halted even should we wish to halt it; it is a solemn demand of the willNote. Religion is the very end of human existence, and by no means something to be made an instrument for any other end.

If, as voluntaristic psychologists assert, the willNote is the fundamental activity of the mind and all mental phenomena take the form of will, then our mind constitutes a system of desires, and the most potent desire forming the center of this system is our self. Unifying all things from this center—that is to say, maintaining and developing the self—constitutes our spiritual life. So long as this unification progresses, we are alive; but should this unification be broken, even though we may continue to live in the physical body, in spirit we are as good as dead. Yet can we truly unify all things around individual desires as their center? That is, can individual life be maintained and developed indefinitely? The world was not created for the sake of the individual, nor are individual desires the supreme demands of human life. Individual life must inevitably clash outwardly with the world and inwardly fall into contradiction with itself. Here, we are compelled to seek a still greater life—that is, we are driven to seek a greater unification through a shift in the center of consciousness. Such a demand can also be witnessed in all instances where a communal spirit arises, but the religious demand represents the ultimate culmination of such demands. So long as we set up a subjective self against the objective world and attempt thereby to unify the latter, no matter how great that subjective self may be, its unification cannot avoid remaining relative. Absolute unification can only be attained by completely casting aside subjective unification and according wholly with objective unification.

Originally, the unification of consciousness is the prerequisite for the establishment of consciousness and its fundamental demand. Consciousness devoid of unity is tantamount to nothingness. Consciousness can only be established through the opposition of contents, and the more diverse those contents are, the greater the unification required on the other side. That which is reached at the culmination of this unification is what we call objective realityNote, and this unification attains its apex in the union of subject and object. Nor does objective reality exist independently apart from subjective consciousness; it designates that which, as the outcome of the unification of consciousness, cannot be doubted even should we wish to doubt it, and beyond which there is no further way to seek even should we wish to seek. And such a state of the apex of conscious unification—namely, the state of the union of subject and object—is not only the fundamental demand of consciousness, but in truth the primordial state of consciousness itself. As Condillac observed, when we first see light, rather than saying that we see light, we are light itself. Every primordial sensation must be directly the universe itself for an infant. In this horizon, there is as yet no separation of subject and object, self and thing are one, and there is only a single pure fact. Because self and object are one, there is neither any further truth to be sought nor any desire left to be satisfied; humanity is with God, and it is perhaps such a state that is meant by the Garden of Eden. Yet as consciousness differentiates and develops, subject and object come into mutual opposition, self and thing turn away from each other, and in human life there arise demand and suffering; humanity departs from God, and paradise is forever barred to the descendants of Adam. Nevertheless, no matter how consciousness may differentiate and develop, it can never entirely depart from the unity of the union of subject and object; in knowledge and in will, we ceaselessly seek this unification. The differentiation and development of consciousness is the other face of unification, and is likewise an indispensable condition for the establishment of consciousness. That consciousness differentiates and develops is, on the contrary, for the sake of seeking an even greater unification. Unification must truly be called the Alpha and Omega of consciousness. The religious demand is a demand for the unification of consciousness in this sense, and simultaneously a demand for union with the universe.

Thus the religious demand is the deepest and greatest demand of the human heart. We possess various physical demands as well as spiritual demands; yet these are all merely demands of a part of the self. Religion alone is the resolution of the self itself. In knowledge and in will we seek the unification of consciousness and the union of subject and object, yet this remains merely a one-sided unification. Religion seeks the deepest unification lying behind these unifications—it seeks the primordial unification prior to the bifurcation of intellect and will. It may be said that all our various demands are differentiated from the religious demand, and through the outcome of their development return to it once more. In times when human intellect was not yet developed, people were on the contrary deeply religious; and the ultimate summit of learning and morality must likewise enter into religion. In the world, people often ask why religion is necessary. But such a question is identical to asking why it is necessary to live. Religion does not exist apart from one's own life; its demand is the demand of life itself. To pose such a question merely reveals a lack of seriousness regarding one's own existence. Whoever desires to think earnestly and live earnestly cannot fail to feel an ardent religious demand.

ReligionNote is the relationship between GodNote and humankind. While there may be various ways of conceiving of God, I believe it most appropriate to regard God as the ground of the universe, whereas human beings refer to our individual consciousness. Depending on how the relationship between these two is conceived, diverse religionsNote are determined. What, then, is the true religious relationship? If GodNote and we are fundamentally distinct in essence, and God were merely a great power superior to human beings, we could not find in ourselves the slightest religious motive toward God. We might perhaps fear God and obey divine commands, or flatter God and seek worldly fortune; but all such actions would arise merely from self-interest, for a mutual relationship between beings differing in essence cannot be established outside of self-interest. As W. Robertson Smith also stated, religion does not arise from fearing an unknowable power, but from revering and lovingNote a God who stands in a relationship of kinship with oneself; nor is religion an arbitrary relationship of an individual toward a supernatural power, but a communal relationship of each member of a society toward the power that preserves the peace and order of that society. At the root of all religion there must be a relationship in which God and humankind share the same nature—that is, a relationship of parent and child. Yet merely sharing common interests between God and humankind, wherein God helps and protects us, does not yet constitute true religion. God must be the ground of the universe and simultaneously our own ground; for us to return to God means to return to our own source. Moreover, God must be the end of all things, and therefore the end of human beings as well; each person finds their true end in God. Just as hands and feet belong to the person, so human beings belong to God. When we return to God, from one perspective it appears as though we lose ourselves, but from another perspective it is precisely the means by which we find ourselves. As ChristNote said, "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it"—this represents religion in its purest and most refined essence. The relationship between God and humankind in true religion must unfailingly be of this kind. When we pray to God or give thanks, it is not for the sake of our own petty existence; we pray to return to God as our primordial home, and give thanks that we have returned to God. Furthermore, when it is said that God lovesNote humankind, it is not that God bestows earthly happiness upon us, but that God causes us to return unto Himself. God is the wellspring of life; I live solely in God. Only when it is thus conceived is religion filled with life, and genuine reverent devotion arises. Merely speaking of resignation or letting go does not yet cast off the foul stench of the self; it cannot yet be called true reverent devotion. To say that one finds the true self in God might perhaps seem to place emphasis upon the self, but on the contrary, this is the very way in which one truly abandons the self and venerates God.

That God and humankind share the same nature, and that human beings return to their origin in God, is the fundamental thought of all religion, and I believe that only what is grounded upon this thought can be called true religion. Yet even upon this single thought, the relationship between God and humankind can be conceived in various ways. God may be conceived as transcending outside the universe, governing the world from without and operating upon humankind from the outside; or God may be conceived as immanent, such that human beings are part of God and God operates upon human beings from within. The former represents the conception of theism, while the latter represents the conception of pantheism. To conceive of it in the manner of the latter may perhaps be rational, but many religious figures oppose it. For to equate God with nature is seen as eradicating the personalityNote of God, and to regard all things as mere modifications of God not only forfeits the transcendence of God and impairs divine majesty, but also gives rise to the grave difficulty that the origin of evil must likewise be attributed to God. However, when considered carefully, it cannot be said that pantheistic thought inevitably possesses these defects, nor can it be said that theism is entirely free of them. Even if one equates God with the substance of realityNote, if the ground of reality is spiritual, this does not necessarily mean losing the personalityNote of God. Furthermore, no matter what form of pantheism it may be, it does not hold that individual things just as they are constitute God directly. In SpinozaNote's philosophy as well, individual things are finite modes, whereas God is the infinite substance; finite things and the infinite substance cannot be equated. In the thought of the profoundest pantheism, God is seen as the foundation of reality and the unifying power of the universe, and we are said to see God by casting off our individual biases and returning to this foundation. In this respect, it does not differ in the least from the spirit of theism. Conversely, the theistic view that an external Creator formed the universe like an artisan and governs it from outside is a deeply unphilosophical notion. Such a God is merely a colossal human being, possessing no intrinsic connection with us. Even should we love such a God, it would be impossible to feel toward Him the profound reverence and devotion of saying 'I live in God.'

The notion that a transcendent God exists and governs the world from without not only clashes with our reason, but such a religion cannot be called the deepest form of religion. If we consider God to be the ground of the universe and recognize the manifestation of God directly in nature, this does not mean, as the naturalists assert, to explain all things purely through material laws. Rather, as I have argued previously, matter is merely an abstract concept; what truly exists is consciousness alone. The laws of nature are the laws of the unification of consciousness, and therefore they are spiritual laws. When we see nature from this perspective, nature is not a dead machine, but a living spiritual organism. The laws of nature are the expression of the divine will. Some may argue that if we equate God with the laws of nature, we lose the personality of God and cannot find miracles or special divine revelations. But why should we seek God in supernatural miracles rather than in the wondrous order of nature? To seek God in supernatural occurrences is to seek God in the arbitrary and accidental. The true miracle is that the universe is governed by orderly laws without a single hairsbreadth of deviation. As for revelation, what we ought to know as the divine will is the law of nature itself; outside of this, there is no such thing as divine revelation. Of course, because God is unfathomable, what we know is merely a small fraction of God. Yet even if there were some other revelation outside of this, we would have no way of knowing it; and if there were a revelation that contradicted nature's laws, it would on the contrary demonstrate a contradiction within God. That we believe in the divinity of Christ is because his life embodies the deepest truth of human existence. Our God must be the internal unifying powerNote of the universe whereby heaven and earth are established and all things are nurtured; outside of this, there is nothing that can be called God. If it is said that God is personal, it must mean recognizing personal significance directly in the ground of such realityNote. Those who, without doing so, speak separately of the supernatural are merely relying upon historical legends or indulging in their own subjective fantasies. Moreover, precisely because we see God directly at the foundation of this nature and at the foundation of our self, we feel an infinite warmth in God and are able to attain the true essence of religion—saying 'I live in God.' Genuine reverent love toward God can only arise from within this. Love means that two personalities unite into one, and reverence is the sentiment that a partial personality feels toward the total personality. At the root of reverent love there must unfailingly be the unification of personality. Therefore, the sentiment of reverent love does not arise merely between person and person, but also manifests within one's own consciousness. Just as our differing consciousness of yesterday and today is filled with the sentiment of self-reverence and self-love because it possesses the identical center of consciousness, so our revering God and loving God must be because we possess the identical ground with God—because our spirit is a partial consciousness of God. Of course, although God and human beings possess the ground of the identical spirit, one might also conceive that they are independent just as two persons possessing the identical thought are independent of each other. But this is to distinguish spirit temporally and spatially as viewed from the physical body. In spirit, those who possess the identical ground are the identical spirit. Just as our consciousness that changes day by day is viewed as the identical spirit because it possesses the identical unity, so our spirit must be of the identical substance with God. Thus to say that I live in God is not merely a metaphor, but can be a fact (Bishop Westcott also, commenting on the Gospel of John 17:21, states that the unity of believers is not merely an agreement in purpose and feeling—a moral unity—but a vital unity of life).

In this manner, the deepest religion can be established upon the consubstantiality of God and humankind, and the true meaning of religion resides in attaining the significance of this union of God and humankindNote. That is to say, it consists in experimentally verifying, at the foundation of consciousness, the magnificent cosmic spirit that breaks through our self-consciousness and operates within us. Faith is not something to be bestowed from without by legend or theory; it must be polished forth from within. As Jakob BöhmeNote stated, we arrive at God through the innermost birth (*die innerste Geburt*). In this internal regeneration, we see God directly and believe in Him, while simultaneously discovering herein our true life and feeling an infinite power. Faith is not mere knowledge; in this sense, it is both an intuition and a vital power. At the foundation of all our spiritual activities there operates a single unifying powerNote; this is what we call our self, and also what we designate as personality. Needless to say for desire, even the most objective things such as knowledge are never without the hue of this unifying power—that is, each individual's personality. Both knowledge and desire are established through this power. Faith is thus a unifying power that transcends knowledge. Rather than faith being supported by knowledge or willNote, it is rather knowledge and will that are supported by faith. Faith in this sense is mystical. That faith is mystical does not mean that it runs contrary to knowledge; if faith were something that clashed with knowledge, it could not be made the foundation of life. Having exhausted knowledge and exhausted the will, we attain from within that faith which we cannot fail to believe, even should we wish not to believe.

GodNote signifies the ground of this universe. As stated above, I do not regard God as a Creator who transcends outside the universe, but consider God directly as the ground of this realityNote. The relationship between GodNote and the universe is not like that between an artist and his artwork, but like the relationship between substance and phenomenon. The universe is not the artifact of God, but the expression—the manifestation—of God. From the celestial movements of the sun, moon, and stars outwardly to the subtlest workings of the human heart inwardly, there is nothing that is not a manifestation of God; at the foundation of all these things, we are able to revere the divine radiance of God in every single instance.

Just as Newton and Kepler were struck with a sense of pious reverence upon beholding the harmonious regularity of celestial motions, the more we investigate natural phenomena, the more we can recognize that behind them a single unifying powerNote holds sway. The progress of scholarship denotes nothing other than such unification of knowledge. Just as we recognize outwardly the governance of a single unifying power at the foundation of nature, so inwardly at the foundation of the human heart we must likewise recognize the governance of a single unifying power. Although the human heart appears manifold and almost without fixed rules, when viewed with penetrative insight, it seems that a magnificent unifying powerNote governs it throughout all ages and across East and West. When we reflect further, nature and spirit are by no means entirely devoid of relation; between the two there exists an intimate connection. We cannot help but conceive of the unification of these two; that is to say, at the foundation of both there must be a still greater, singular unifying powerNote. There is neither philosophy nor science that does not recognize this unification. And this unification is none other than God. Of course, if, as materialists and general scientists assert, physical matter were the sole realityNote and all things merely obeyed the laws of physical force, we would be unable to conceive of anything like God. Yet is the true state of reality in truth of such a kind?

As I have previously argued regarding reality, we cannot know an independent reality called physical matter apart from our conscious phenomena. The fact of direct experience given to us is solely this conscious phenomenon. Space, time, and physical force are all merely concepts established to unify and explain this fact. What physicists call pure matter, from which all traits of our individual person have been stripped away, is an abstract concept furthest removed from concrete facts. The closer we approach concrete facts, the more personal they become. The most concrete fact is the most personal. For this reason, primitive explanations were entirely anthropomorphic, as in mythology; but with the advance of pure knowledge, explanations became increasingly general and abstract, ultimately giving rise to concepts such as pure matter. Yet such explanations, in addition to being extremely external and superficial, must not make us forget that behind them there lurks our own subjective unification. The most fundamental explanation must always return to the self. The master key for explaining the universe resides in this self. To attempt to explain spirit by means of matter must be called putting the cart before the horse.

What Newton and Kepler beheld and took to be the harmonious order of natural phenomena is, in truth, nothing more than the harmonious order of our conscious phenomena. Consciousness is established entirely through unification. And this unification extends from the small scale—the unification between the daily consciousness of each individual—to the grand scale, reaching the cosmic unification of consciousness that binds together the consciousness of all people (to restrict the unification of consciousness within individual consciousness is merely a dogma superadded to pure experienceNote). The natural world is a system of consciousness formed through such trans-individual unification. We unify our own experience by means of individual subjectivity, and further unify each person's experience by means of trans-individual subjectivity; and the natural world arises as the object of this trans-individual subjectivity. Josiah Royce also stated: "The existence of nature is bound up with the belief in the existence of our fellows" (*The World and the Individual*, Second Series, Lect. IV). Therefore, the unity of the natural world likewise turns out, after all, to be merely a species of the unification of consciousness. Originally, there are not two kinds of reality called spirit and nature; the distinction between the two arises from a difference in the viewpoint taken toward the identical reality. In the fact of direct experience there is no opposition between subject and object, no distinction between spirit and matter: matter is mind, mind is matter, and there is only a single reality.

If reality thus knows no distinction between spirit and nature, and consequently there are not two kinds of unification, but merely that the selfsame fact of direct experience itself generates various distinctions depending upon how it is viewed, then God, whom I previously described as the ground of reality, must be the ground of both nature and spirit, and must be that which unifies both. How, then, does this singular fact of direct experience differentiate into the two aspects of nature and spirit? What we call nature is that which is established by abstracting from the direct concrete reality the aspects of the individual self, namely thinkingNote and willNote; spirit is that which is established by taking the unifying operation of this concrete reality as its center. Therefore, nature is the objective aspect of reality, while spirit is the subjective aspect. To borrow Spinoza's terminology, nature is the attribute of extension, while spirit is the attribute of thought. Just as a circle viewed from the outside is convex and viewed from the inside is concave, so nature and spirit are merely the outer and inner aspects of the identical reality. And that which forms the foundation of both, unifying them from within, is God.

What kind of existence, then, is God as the unifier of the universe and the ground of reality in this sense? That which governs the spirit must be the laws of the spirit. Matter, as stated above, is an abstract concept, and material laws are the laws of the abstract aspect of reality; therefore, that which unifies the concrete reality must be spiritual laws. In other words, God must be personalNote. To say that God is personal does not mean that God possesses a physical body or is limited in space like an individual person, but that God is a spiritual unity possessing consciousness, willNote, and love. SpinozaNote held that God does not possess intellect or will, and that to attribute intellect and will to God is like attributing barking to the dog-star in heaven; yet this was because Spinoza conceived of intellect and will in a finite, human sense. In the ground of reality, thoughtNote and will cannot be separated. When reality differentiates and develops according to its own internal nature, its subjective manifestation is thinking, while its objective manifestation is will. God as the total unity of reality must possess both thinking and will in their supreme sense. Moreover, God must be supreme personalityNote and supreme loveNote. Love is the demand of one personality to unite with another personality; it is the feeling of one whole in which the separation of subject and object is overcome. Since God is the unity of all reality, God must be the source of all love. As Saint AugustineNote stated, God is truth itself and love itself.

Next, concerning the freedom of the will, there are various meanings; but true freedom must mean the so-called necessary freedom of acting from one's own inner nature. An uncaused will is an impossibility. If a will without any cause were to arise, it would be an accidental event, and we could not feel responsibility for it. True freedom means that the self acts purely from within its own essential nature, without being coerced by any external cause. In this sense, God is the most free being. God is not constrained by any external necessity; God acts entirely from the necessity of His own internal nature. Saint AugustineNote also maintained that the highest freedom is not the freedom of being able to sin or not to sin (*posse non peccare*), but the inability to sin (*non posse peccare*), which is the necessity of good. When the self accords entirely with its own deepest nature, necessity and freedom become one. And this deepest nature is none other than loveNote. When we act from love, we feel the highest freedom while at the same time feeling an irresistible necessity. As EckhartNote said, love knows no 'why' (*warum*); it acts purely from its own essence.

As discussed above, although we say that God is personal, we cannot directly equate God with our subjective spirit; rather, God is the ground of pure experienceNote where there is no separation of subject and object and no distinction between self and thing. God is the eternal present, the living activity of reality itself. In this sense, ChristNote said, "Before Abraham was, I am." God is not an object that can be known through discursive intellect; God can only be known through pure experienceNote—that is, through intellectual intuitionNote. In intellectual intuition, the knower and the known are one. Saint AugustineNote also said, "If you ask what God is, I do not know; if you do not ask, I know." EckhartNote likewise declared: "The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love." Jakob BöhmeNote also stated that God is the eternal Nothing (*das ewige Nichts*), and that through the innermost birth we attain God (BöhmeNote, *Morgenröte*).

Some might argue that when argued in the manner above, God becomes identical with the essence of things, and even though spiritual, would have no distinction from reason or conscience, thereby losing His living, individual personality. Individuality, it is argued, can only arise from an indeterminate free will (this was once the point of contention where Duns Scotus opposed Thomas Aquinas in medieval philosophy). Toward such a God, it is claimed, we could never feel religiousNote emotion. In religion, sin is not merely breaking a law, but turning away from a personality; repentance is not merely moral remorse, but the heartfelt anguish of having harmed a parent or betrayed a benefactor. Erskine of Linlathen stated: "Religion and morality are divided according to whether one recognizes a personality behind conscience or not." However, as HegelNote and others have observed, true individuality does not exist apart from universality; it is the determinate universality (*bestimmte Allgemeinheit*) that becomes individuality. The universal is the spirit of the concrete. Individuality is not something produced by adding some other element to universality from the outside; it is the development of universality itself that becomes individuality. In a mere accidental combination of various properties devoid of any internal unity, there is nothing that can be called individuality. The freedom of the will as an element of individual personality denotes the self-determination of the universal. Just as the concept of a triangle can differentiate into diverse triangles, so the self-awareness of the various possibilities of determination contained within a universal constitutes the feeling of freedom. Rather than from an absolute free will possessing no ground whatsoever, individual self-awareness would never arise. Although there is the adage that the reason for individuality is sought in vain (*ratio singularitatis frustra quaeritur*), a truly groundless individuality of such a kind must be identical to a void devoid of any content. It is merely that concrete individuality cannot be known through abstract concepts. Even individuality that cannot be expressed in abstract concepts can be vividly rendered through the brush of a painter or the pen of a novelist.

That God is the unity of the universe does not mean merely the unity of an abstract concept; God is a concrete unity like our individual self—that is, a living spirit. Just as our spirit can be called individual in the sense stated above, so God too can be called individual. Reason and conscience may be parts of God's unifying activity, but they are not that living spirit itself. The existence of such a divine spirit is not merely a philosophical argument, but a fact of spiritual experience in actual life. At the bottom of our consciousness, such a spirit operates in everyone (reason and conscience are its voice); it is merely that, obstructed by our small self, we are unable to know this. For instance, the poet Tennyson had the following experience: when he quietly repeated his own name, from the deep bottom of his individual consciousness his individuality seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being; and yet this consciousness was by no means hazy or dim, but clearest of the clear and surest of the sure. At this moment, death seemed an almost laughable impossibility, and the loss of personality seemed the only true life. He is said to have experienced this frequently from his childhood in times of lonely solitude. Furthermore, a man of letters like J. A. Symonds also stated that as our ordinary consciousness gradually fades away, the primordial consciousness at its foundation grows stronger, until at last only a pure, absolute, abstract self remains. Besides these, the examples of such experiences among religiousNote mystics are endless (William JamesNote, *The Varieties of Religious Experience*, Lect. XVI, XVII). Some might perhaps deem all such phenomena to be pathological, but whether they are truly pathological or not is determined by whether they are rational or not. As I have stated before, if reality is spiritual and our spirit is merely a small part of it, there is no reason whatsoever to find it strange that we should break through our petty consciousness and intuit a great, singular spirit. On the contrary, clinging obstinately to the narrow confines of our petty consciousness may rather be the delusion. In great individuals, there must unfailingly be spiritual experiences far more profound than those of ordinary people.

If the fact of pure experienceNote is the sole realityNote and GodNote is its unity, then the nature of God and His relationship to the world can all be known from the nature of the unity of our pure experience—that is, the unity of consciousness—and its relationship to its contents. First of all, the unity of our consciousness can neither be seen nor heard; it can never become an object of knowledge. Because all things are established through it, it thoroughly transcends all things. When encountering black, it manifests black, yet the mind itself is not black; when encountering white, it manifests white, yet the mind itself is not white. Not to mention Buddhism, in medieval philosophy the so-called negative theology of the school of Dionysius the Areopagite, which discussed God through negation, likewise reflected this aspect. Thinkers such as Nicholas of Cusa declared that God transcends both being and non-being, that God is both being and non-being. When we deeply reflect upon the bottom of our own consciousness, we can discover profound meaning in the words of Jakob BöhmeNote, who spoke of God as the "quietude without things," the "Abyss" (*Ungrund*), or the "willNote without an object" (*Wille ohne Gegenstand*), and we are struck with a sublime and wondrous awe. In addition, attributes of God such as eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence must all be interpreted from the nature of this unity of consciousness. Because time and space are established through the unity of consciousness, God transcends above time and space, being eternal, immortal, and omnipresent. Because all things arise through the unity of consciousness, God is omniscient and omnipotent, knowing all things and capable of all things; in GodNote, knowing and willing are identical.

What, then, is the relationship between such an absolute, infinite God and this world? A nothingness separated from being is not true nothingness; a one separated from the all is not a true one; an equality separated from distinction is not true equality. Just as without God there is no world, so without the world there is no God. Of course, the world here does not refer solely to this world of ours. As SpinozaNote said, because the attributes of God are infinite, God must encompass infinite worlds. It is simply that worldly manifestation belongs to the very essence of God and is by no means an accidental operation; God did not merely create the world once in the past, but is its eternal creator (HegelNote). In short, the relationship between God and the world is the relationship between the unity of consciousness and its contents. The contents of consciousness are established through unity, but apart from the contents of consciousness there is no unity. The contents of consciousness and their unity are not two separate things—that which is unified and that which unifies; they are merely two aspects of the identical realityNote. In its state of direct experience, every conscious phenomenon is merely a single activity; it is by reflecting upon it as an object of knowledge that its contents are variously analyzed and differentiated. In terms of the process of its development, that which first appeared impulsively as a single whole activity has its contents reflected upon and discriminated through contradiction and conflict. Here too, I cannot help recalling the words of BöhmeNote. He stated that God prior to manifestation, who may be called the willNote without an object, reflects upon Himself—that is, by making Himself into a mirror, subject and object bifurcate, and from this God and the world develop.

Originally, the differentiation of reality and its unification are not two separate things that can exist apart. Unification on the one hand implies differentiation on the other. For instance, in a tree, that the flower is fully a flower and the leaf is fully a leaf manifests the very essence of the tree. The aforementioned distinction is merely a matter of our thinking, not an immediate fact. As GoetheNote said, "Nature has neither kernel nor shell; she is everything at once" (*Natur hat weder Kern noch Schale, alles ist sie mit einem Male*). In concrete true reality—that is, in the fact of direct experience—differentiation and unification constitute a single activity. For example, in a single painting or a single musical piece, there is not a single brushstroke or a single tone that does not directly manifest the spirit of the whole; and that which is a single inspiration in the painter or musician overflows directly into the myriad variations of landscape or the intricate contours of melody. Just as such an artwork is the manifestation of the artist's spirit, so the universe is the manifestation of the cosmic spirit—the manifestation of God. The differentiated myriad phenomena of the universe are the living expression of the singular God. As GoetheNote wrote in *Faust*, the Earth Spirit weaves at the roaring loom of time, weaving the living garment of the deity. In the identical manner, EckhartNote declared: "The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me." To see God is to become one with God. The universe is the body of God, and its diverse differentiations are the organs of this cosmic life. In each individual phenomenon, the spirit of the whole is active. The world is thus not an artifact created from without by an external God, but the living self-expression of God Himself. And the realization of this harmony is the GoodNote. As ChristNote taught, to love God with all one's heart and to love one's neighbor as oneself are not two distinct commandments; they are one and the same loveNote, for to love one's neighbor is to recognize the divine life within that neighbor and unite with God.

Now, from conceiving the relationship between the world and God in the manner described above, how must our individuality be explained? If all things are manifestations of God and God alone is true reality, does our individuality not end up being annihilated as an illusion? I do not believe so. Just as in a great drama each character retains their distinct individuality while contributing to the unity of the whole, so within God each individual personality possesses its own unique value and significance. The universe is not a monotonous, uniform whole, but an organic unity rich in infinite differentiation. God is not an abstract unity that erases differences, but a concrete unity that harmonizes all differences within Himself. Just as each moment's consciousness of our own is under an individual unity while simultaneously capable of being viewed as an independent consciousness, the same holds true here. J. R. Illingworth stated: "A personalityNote necessarily seeks another personality; in another personality one attains the satisfaction of one's whole personality—that is, loveNote is an indispensable characteristic of personality" (*Personality: Human and Divine*). To recognize another personalityNote is to recognize one's own personality, and the relationship wherein each mutually recognizes the other's personality is none other than love; viewed from one side, it is the union of two personalities. In love, two personalities, while mutually respecting each other and remaining independent of each other, unite to form a single personality. When considered in this way, because God is infinite love, it can be said that God encompasses all personalities while simultaneously affirming the independence of all personalities.

Next, the criticism leveled against pantheistic thought—such as the view that all things are manifestations of God—is the question of how the origin of evil can be explained. In my view, there is originally nothing that can be called absolutely evil; all things in their primordial nature are goodNote. Reality itself must be said to be good. Although religiousNote figures denounce the evils of the flesh with extreme vehemence, carnal desires are not absolutely evil in themselves; they become evil only in that they obstruct spiritual advancement. Moreover, as evolutionary ethicists assert, what we call sin and evil today was once the morality of a certain epoch. That is, it can be said to be a relic of past morality, which becomes evil merely because it does not suit the present age. Therefore, there is nothing that is originally evil in the thing itself; evil arises from the contradiction and conflict within the system of reality. And from what does this conflict arise? It is grounded in the differentiating activity of reality, and is an indispensable requirement for the development of reality; reality develops through contradiction and conflict. Just as Mephistopheles declared himself to be "part of that power which always wills evil and always works the good," evil may be called a constituent element of the universe. Needless to say, because evil is not the activity of cosmic unification and progress, it is of course not something to be made an end in itself. Yet a tranquil, untroubled world devoid of all sin and free of all discontent must be called an exceedingly mediocre and shallow world. Those who know not sin can never truly know the love of God. Those who have neither discontent nor suffering cannot comprehend profound spiritual refinement. Sin, discontent, and suffering are indispensable requirements for the spiritual advancement of us human beings; therefore, true religiousNote persons, rather than seeing a contradiction of God in these things, on the contrary perceive therein the profound grace of God. Because these things exist, the world does not become that much more imperfect; on the contrary, it becomes rich and profound. If all these were entirely removed from this world, not only would the path of spiritual advancement be lost, but how many beautiful spiritual endeavors would likewise vanish from this world along with them! When considered from the perspective of the universe as a whole, and assuming that the universe is constructed upon spiritual significance, we can find no imperfection whatsoever in the existence of these things; on the contrary, we can recognize their indispensable necessity. Sin is something to be detested; yet there is nothing in the world so beautiful as a sin that has been repented. Here, I cannot help recalling a passage from Oscar Wilde's *De Profundis*. Christ loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to perfection in human life. To transform an interesting thief into a tedious honest man was not his aim. He made of sin and suffering something beautiful and holy, in a way never before known to the world. Of course, the sinner must repent; but this is the completion of what he has done. The Greeks considered that a person cannot alter one's past; there was even the saying that not even the gods can alter the past. But Christ showed that even the most common sinner could achieve this. When the prodigal son knelt down and wept, Christ would say that he made his past sins and sufferings into the most beautiful and sacred moments of his life. Wilde was a man of sin; hence he knew well the essence of sin.

[Author's Note: This essay was not written as a continuation of this book. However, because I believe it possesses a close connection with the thought of this work, I have decided to append it here.] Knowledge and loveNote are commonly regarded as entirely disparate operations of the spirit. Yet I believe that these two mental activities are by no means distinct in kind, but are originally the identical spiritual operation. What kind of spiritual operation are they, then? In a single phrase, they are the activity of the union of subject and object. They are the operation wherein the self accords with things. Why is knowledge the union of subject and object? When we say that we know the true state of things, it is only when we have thoroughly dissolved away our own subjective delusions and arbitrary conjectures—namely, what is called the subjective—and have accorded with the true state of the thing, that is, when we have accorded with pure objectivity, that we are first able to achieve this. For instance, to claim that the dark patches on the bright moon represent a rabbit pounding rice cakes, or that earthquakes are caused by the thrashing of a giant catfish underground, are subjective delusions. Yet in the sciences of astronomy and geology, we completely cast aside such subjective delusions, investigate in accordance with purely objective natural laws, and herein for the first time are able to arrive at the true state of these phenomena. The more objective we become, the better we are able to know the true state of things. The history of the progress of scholarship over several millennia reveals the trajectory whereby we human beings have cast aside the subjective and followed the objective. Next, let us explain why loveNote is the union of subject and object. When we say that we love an object, it means that we cast off the self and accord with the other. Only when self and other unite, without the slightest rift between them, does true affection arise. That we love a flower means that we become one with the flower. That we love the moon means that we become one with the moon. Only when the parent becomes the child and the child becomes the parent does the affection between parent and child truly arise. Because the parent becomes the child, every benefit or harm to the child is felt as one's own benefit or harm; and because the child becomes the parent, every joy or sorrow of the parent is felt as one's own joy or sorrow. The more we cast aside our private self and become purely objective—that is, selfless—the greater and deeper love becomes. Love advances from the love between parent and child or husband and wife to the love of friends, and from the love of friends it advances to the love of all humanity. The love of the BuddhaNote extended even unto birds, beasts, grasses, and trees. Thus knowledge and love are the identical spiritual operation. Therefore, in order to know an object, one must love it; and to love an object, one must know it. Because the mathematician casts off the self, loves mathematical principles, and becomes one with mathematical principles themselves, he is able to illuminate mathematical truths. It is by genuinely loving nature, according with nature, and immersing the self into nature that the artist is first able to perceive the truth of nature. Moreover, when considered from the other side, I love my friend because I know him. Sharing the same circumstances, sharing the same thoughts and tastes, the deeper the mutual understanding becomes, the warmer and more profound sympathy becomes. However, to divide these two activities and consider that love is the result of knowledge, or that knowledge is the result of love, does not yet grasp the true reality of love and knowledge. Knowledge is love, and love is knowledge. For example, when we are absorbed in what we love, we are almost unconscious. Forgetting the self, only a wondrous power surpassing the self operates independently and majestically. At this time there is neither subject nor object; there is true union of subject and object. This moment is knowledge-as-love, love-as-knowledge. When captivated by the wonder of mathematical truth, forgetting sleep and food to immerse oneself in it, one is loving mathematics at the same time that one is knowing mathematics. Furthermore, when in the face of another's joy and sorrow there is entirely no distinction between self and other, and one directly feels in oneself what the other feels, laughing together and weeping together, at this time one is loving the other and simultaneously knowing the other. Love is the direct intuition of another's feelings. When rescuing an infant about to fall into a pond, there is not even the leisure for the thought of affection to arise. Commonly, it is said that love is an emotion and must be distinguished from pure knowledge. In actual mental phenomena, however, there is neither such a thing as pure knowledge nor such a thing as pure emotion. Such distinctions are nothing more than abstract concepts created by psychologists for academic convenience. Just as scholarly research must be sustained by a kind of emotion, so loving another must have a kind of intuition as its foundation. In my view, ordinary knowledge is knowledge of an impersonalNote object; even if the object is personal, it is knowledge when viewing it as impersonal. In contrast to this, love is knowledge of a personal object; even if the object is impersonal, it is knowledge when viewing it as personal. The difference between the two does not reside in the mental operation itself, but may rather be said to depend upon the kind of object. And if, as many scholars and philosophers have said from ancient times, the substance of cosmic realityNote is personalNote, then love is the power that grasps the substance of reality. It is the deepest knowledge of things. The knowledge of analysis and inference is superficial knowledge of things and cannot grasp reality itself. We can reach it solely through love. Love is the apex of knowledge. Having thus briefly stated the relationship between knowledge and love, let us now apply this to religiousNote matters and consider it. The subjective is self-power (jiriki); the objective is other-power (tariki). That we know things and love things means that we cast off self-power and enter into the faith of other-power. If the life's work of human beings consists in nothing other than knowledge and love, then we are working day by day upon the faith of other-power. Both scholarship and morality are the radiance of the BuddhaNote, and that which is called religionNote is the ultimate culmination of this operation. While scholarship and morality bathe in this light of other-power upon individual, differentiated phenomena, religion comes into direct contact with the absolute, infinite Buddha Himself over the whole of the universe. Words such as "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt," or "Whether the Nembutsu is truly the seed for rebirth in the Pure Land, or an action that will cause me to fall into Hell, I have no knowledge whatsoever," represent the deepest secret of religion. And to know this absolute, infinite Buddha or God is possible solely through loving Him; to love Him is precisely to know Him. The Vedic religion of India, the Neoplatonists (PlatoNote), and the Holy Path gate of Buddhism call this 'knowing'; Christianity and the Pure Land school call this 'loving' or 'relying upon'. While each possesses its own distinctive characteristics, in their essence they are identical. God is not something that can be known through analysis or inference. If the essence of realityNote is personal, God is the most personal reality. That we know God is something we can know solely through the intuition of love or faith. Therefore, one who says 'I do not know God, I merely love God or believe in God' is the one who knows God best of all.

[Author's Note: This essay was not written as a continuation of this book. However, because I believe it possesses a close connection with the thought of this work, I have decided to append it here.] Knowledge and loveNote are commonly regarded as entirely disparate operations of the spirit. Yet I believe that these two mental activities are by no means distinct in kind, but are originally the identical spiritual operation. What kind of spiritual operation are they, then? In a single phrase, they are the activity of the union of subject and object. They are the operation wherein the self accords with things. Why is knowledge the union of subject and object? When we say that we know the true state of things, it is only when we have thoroughly dissolved away our own subjective delusions and arbitrary conjectures—namely, what is called the subjective—and have accorded with the true state of the thing, that is, when we have accorded with pure objectivity, that we are first able to achieve this. For instance, to claim that the dark patches on the bright moon represent a rabbit pounding rice cakes, or that earthquakes are caused by the thrashing of a giant catfish underground, are subjective delusions. Yet in the sciences of astronomy and geology, we completely cast aside such subjective delusions, investigate in accordance with purely objective natural laws, and herein for the first time are able to arrive at the true state of these phenomena. The more objective we become, the better we are able to know the true state of things. The history of the progress of scholarship over several millennia reveals the trajectory whereby we human beings have cast aside the subjective and followed the objective. Next, let us explain why loveNote is the union of subject and object. When we say that we love an object, it means that we cast off the self and accord with the other. Only when self and other unite, without the slightest rift between them, does true affection arise. That we love a flower means that we become one with the flower. That we love the moon means that we become one with the moon. Only when the parent becomes the child and the child becomes the parent does the affection between parent and child truly arise. Because the parent becomes the child, every benefit or harm to the child is felt as one's own benefit or harm; and because the child becomes the parent, every joy or sorrow of the parent is felt as one's own joy or sorrow. The more we cast aside our private self and become purely objective—that is, selfless—the greater and deeper love becomes. Love advances from the love between parent and child or husband and wife to the love of friends, and from the love of friends it advances to the love of all humanity. The love of the BuddhaNote extended even unto birds, beasts, grasses, and trees.

Thus knowledge and love are the identical spiritual operation. Therefore, in order to know an object, one must love it; and to love an object, one must know it. Because the mathematician casts off the self, loves mathematical principles, and becomes one with mathematical principles themselves, he is able to illuminate mathematical truths. It is by genuinely loving nature, according with nature, and immersing the self into nature that the artist is first able to perceive the truth of nature. Moreover, when considered from the other side, I love my friend because I know him. Sharing the same circumstances, sharing the same thoughts and tastes, the deeper the mutual understanding becomes, the warmer and more profound sympathy becomes. However, to divide these two activities and consider that love is the result of knowledge, or that knowledge is the result of love, does not yet grasp the true reality of love and knowledge. Knowledge is love, and love is knowledge. For example, when we are absorbed in what we love, we are almost unconscious. Forgetting the self, only a wondrous power surpassing the self operates independently and majestically. At this time there is neither subject nor object; there is true union of subject and object. This moment is knowledge-as-love, love-as-knowledge. When captivated by the wonder of mathematical truth, forgetting sleep and food to immerse oneself in it, one is loving mathematics at the same time that one is knowing mathematics. Furthermore, when in the face of another's joy and sorrow there is entirely no distinction between self and other, and one directly feels in oneself what the other feels, laughing together and weeping together, at this time one is loving the other and simultaneously knowing the other. Love is the direct intuition of another's feelings. When rescuing an infant about to fall into a pond, there is not even the leisure for the thought of affection to arise.

Commonly, it is said that love is an emotion and must be distinguished from pure knowledge. In actual mental phenomena, however, there is neither such a thing as pure knowledge nor such a thing as pure emotion. Such distinctions are nothing more than abstract concepts created by psychologists for academic convenience. Just as scholarly research must be sustained by a kind of emotion, so loving another must have a kind of intuition as its foundation. In my view, ordinary knowledge is knowledge of an impersonalNote object; even if the object is personal, it is knowledge when viewing it as impersonal. In contrast to this, love is knowledge of a personal object; even if the object is impersonal, it is knowledge when viewing it as personal. The difference between the two does not reside in the mental operation itself, but may rather be said to depend upon the kind of object. And if, as many scholars and philosophers have said from ancient times, the substance of cosmic realityNote is personalNote, then love is the power that grasps the substance of reality. It is the deepest knowledge of things. The knowledge of analysis and inference is superficial knowledge of things and cannot grasp reality itself. We can reach it solely through love. Love is the apex of knowledge.

Having thus briefly stated the relationship between knowledge and love, let us now apply this to religiousNote matters and consider it. The subjective is self-power (jiriki); the objective is other-power (tariki). That we know things and love things means that we cast off self-power and enter into the faith of other-power. If the life's work of human beings consists in nothing other than knowledge and love, then we are working day by day upon the faith of other-power. Both scholarship and morality are the radiance of the BuddhaNote, and that which is called religionNote is the ultimate culmination of this operation. While scholarship and morality bathe in this light of other-power upon individual, differentiated phenomena, religion comes into direct contact with the absolute, infinite Buddha Himself over the whole of the universe. Words such as "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt," or "Whether the Nembutsu is truly the seed for rebirth in the Pure Land, or an action that will cause me to fall into Hell, I have no knowledge whatsoever," represent the deepest secret of religion. And to know this absolute, infinite Buddha or God is possible solely through loving Him; to love Him is precisely to know Him. The Vedic religion of India, the Neoplatonists (PlatoNote), and the Holy Path gate of Buddhism call this 'knowing'; Christianity and the Pure Land school call this 'loving' or 'relying upon'. While each possesses its own distinctive characteristics, in their essence they are identical. God is not something that can be known through analysis or inference. If the essence of realityNote is personal, God is the most personal reality. That we know God is something we can know solely through the intuition of love or faith. Therefore, one who says 'I do not know God, I merely love God or believe in God' is the one who knows God best of all.