of thought, and that it exists without relation to it?

A short reference to the moral consciousness may suggest the answer to
this difficulty. In morality (as also is the case in knowledge) the
moral ideal, or the objective law of goodness, grows in richness and
fulness of content with the individual who apprehends it. _His_ moral
world is the counterpart of _his_ moral growth as a character. Goodness
_for him_ directly depends upon his recognition of it. Animals,
presumably, have no moral ideal, because they have not the power to
constitute it. In morals, as in knowledge, the mind of man constructs
its own world. And yet, in both alike, the world of truth or of goodness
exists all the same whether the individual knows it or not. He does not
call the moral law into being, but finds it without, and then realizes
it in his own life. The moral law does not vanish and reappear with its
recognition by mankind. It is not subject to the chances and changes of
its life, but a good in itself that is eternal.

Is it therefore independent of all intelligence? Can goodness be
anything but the law of a self-conscious being? Is it the quality or
motive or ideal of a mere thing? Manifestly not. Its relation to
self-consciousness is essential. With the extinction of
self-consciousness all moral goodness is extinguished.

The same holds true of reality. The question of the reality or unreality
of things cannot arise except in an intelligence. Animals have neither
illusions nor truths--unless they are self-conscious. The reality, which
man sets over against his own inadequate knowledge, is posited by him;
and it has no meaning whatsoever except in this contrast. And to
endeavour to conceive a reality which no one knows, is to assert a
relative term without its correlative, which is absurd; it is to posit