An Introduction to Metaphysics

^A COMPARISON of the definitions of ‘^ metaphysics and the various conceptions of the absolute leads to the discovery that philosophers^ in spite of their apparent divergencies, agree in distinguishing two profoundly different ways of knowing a thing. The first implies that we move ‘ round the object; the second that we enter i^r . ifxto it. The first depends on the point of I view at which we are placed and on the J symbols by which we express ourselves. The second neither depends on a point of view nor relfes on any symbol. The first kind of knowledge niay be said to stop at the relative; the second, in those cases where it is poorible^ to attain the absolute.

.’. : : .;CoS8?dQy> tor^ example, the movement of •**•’ un •’object; 4b 2s*pftcer My perception of the motion will vary with the point of view, moving or stationary, from which I observe it. My expression of it will vary with the systems of axes, or the points of reference, to which I relate it; that is, with the symbols by which I translate it. For this double reason I call such motion relative: in the one case, as in the other, I am placed outside the object itself. But when I speak of an absolute movement, I am attributing to the moving object an interior and, so to si)eak, states of mind; I also imply that I am in sympathy with those states, and that I insert myself in them by an effort of N. , imagination. Then, according as the object is moving or stationary, according as it adopts one movement or another, what I experience will vary. And what I experience will depend neither on the point of view I may take up in r^ard to the object, since I am inside the object itself, nor on the symbols by which^ I may translate the motion, since I have rejected all translations in order to possess the original. In short, I shall no longer grasp the movement from without, remaining where I am, but from where it is, from within, as it is in itself. I shall possess an absolute.