THE GENESIS OF "TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS."

It must now be easy to see that mind, in its general form, is three-in-one—a triad. It is a self-reflexive, self-related unit, of three phases. The first phase is automatic "apprehension." The second is conscious "understanding." The third, which we touch here, is "reason." In reason, mind is still the general cosmic principle of awareness, with the function of synthesis, or conjunction. As intuition, it has perceived things. As conception, it has classified them. As a last synthetical unity of awareness, it must include, or "comprehend" them—must relate them to its conjunctive unity in their full scope, which means simply in the ultimate reflexes, or forms, of its own nature and action. As process, this can only be done by referring all things to pure synthesis, or connective identity, as final cause.

Seeing things, and then thinking them, we always end by asking, "Why?" They are, each and all so and so; but what is the "reason" for it? The pure form of answer, apart from all contents, is "because"—on account of cause. Thus reason forms its synthesis of comprehension by referring the particular to the general for a cause—a process that can never stop short of including all things in ultimate unities of cause. It is evident that ultimate unities of cause must contain all subordinate causes or conditions under them. There can be just three such ultimate unities; for there are just three possible kinds of being and conditions that relate to their universals: subjective being and conditions to subjective unity of them; objective being and conditions to objective unity of them; and all being and conditions, both subjective and objective, to the universal unity of being and conditions. These final unities, again, as final—as totalities of conditions with none beyond—are themselves "unconditioned."

Reason, then, as an a-priori synthetical unity, necessarily refers all conditions of things to their final or absolute unities, which are in reality nothing but conceptional reflexes of Reason's own constructive synthetical identity. To be an identity of mind, for instance, to the conditions of subjectivity, reason must receive them into its unity, which thus becomes their totality. Now what is the objective re-presentation, the rational conception of the totality of subjective conditions? It is simply the "transcendental idea" of pure subjectiveness, or Soul. In the same way the totality of objective phenomenal conditions, is the idea of the Universe; while the totality of all conditions, both subjective and objective, is the idea of that in which all mind and all matter are related as their final cause or reason—God.