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જ્ઞાનક્રિયાભ્યામ મેક્ષા
32 seeking to evince the existence of a free remote and disinterested, far removed from world of work in which the creative acti. the spirit of mediocrity that so sullenly broods vity of the self is viewed in constructive over the world. The superior world of selfmanner.
hood does not simply exist, but is an effect Libertarianism can do no more than
thrust out by the ego as it seeks to strive
beyond itself and achieve a victory over demonstrate the abstract possiblity of freedom as a force which exerts itself here and there
the invisible. This act of self-affirmation
wills the self and the world as one from time to time.
that is,
the self is willed as a world. Intro-activity, however, seeks to account for the continuity and systematic coherence of human activity., for, from the inception
The ego is known by means of a comof human culture, the human spirit has lete form of self-affirmation, in which thought been tracing in the air a line parallel to and action are one and the same; this selfthe course of the natural world. The free affirmation, therefore, is a conscious act and dom of humanity is thus something which active thought. Its selfhood and its worldleads the ego forward beyond nature ratherhood are one and the same, than backward into the meshes of causal law; the proof of one is the same as the
When dialectics sounds the depths of seq. proof of the other : it is the perceptible
sation, volition, and intellect, it observes at fact of a system of nature below, and a
the outset that the intellect holds the secret system of humanity above. The possibility
and serves the plan of the self in a way of introactivity has been ignored by tradi
unknown to the other two forms of spiritual tional ontology, which has penetrated beneath
life. Sensation does indeed make the self the crust of reality to the subterannean
aware of its existence, as also of its position fires of free energy. The free strivings be
in the world; activity enables the self to neath the crust of formal reason are essential to a comprehension of the whole, and
re-act upon its experiences; but the power without the recognition of inter-activity,
to improvise, the power to detach the ego the significance of human reality will be
from the world, belongs neither to sensation superficial indeed.
nor volition, but to the intellect alone. If, therefore, the ego is to gain ascendancy
over the world, it must be by means of the The intro-activity of selfhood, recognis. spontaneity of the free intellect. able in the forın of human culture consists Knowledge is thus to be understood as of a complete act of self-affirmation. This a striving after the substantial in the midst affirmatory act on the part of the self con- of the contradictions inherent in sensation sists, not of some life-force whose aim could and volition. be no more than the acquisition of the immediate, but of a striving towards the
-SHAW.
