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The Objective and Subjective Views of Life 59conscious of that which we are potentially and hold withinourselves; the principle of its progress is an increasing selfrecognition,self-realisation and a resultant self-shaping. Reasonand will are only effective movements of the self, reason a processin self-recognition, will a force for self-affirmation and selfshaping.Moreover, reason and intellectual will are only a partof the means by which we recognise and realise ourselves. Subjectivismtends to take a large and complex view of our natureand being and to recognise many powers of knowledge, manyforces of effectuation. Even, we see it in its first movement awayfrom the external and objective method discount and belittle theimportance of the work of the reason and assert the supremacyof the life-impulse or the essential Will-to-be in opposition tothe claims of the intellect or else affirm some deeper power ofknowledge, called nowadays the intuition, which sees things inthe whole, in their truth, in their profundities and harmonieswhile intellectual reason breaks up, falsifies, affirms superficialappearances and harmonises only by a mechanical adjustment.But substantially we can see that what is meant by this intuitionis the self-consciousness feeling, perceiving, grasping in itssubstance and aspects rather than analysing in its mechanismits own truth and nature and powers. The whole impulse ofsubjectivism is to get at the self, to live in the self, to see by theself, to live out the truth of the self internally and externally, butalways from an internal initiation and centre.But still there is the question of the truth of the self, what it is,where is its real abiding-place; and here subjectivism has to dealwith the same factors as the objective view of life and existence.We may concentrate on the individual life and consciousnessas the self and regard its power, freedom, increasing light andsatisfaction and joy as the object of living and thus arrive at asubjective individualism. We may, on the other hand, lay stresson the group consciousness, the collective self; we may see manonly as an expression of this group-self necessarily incompletein his individual or separate being, complete only by that largerentity, and we may wish to subordinate the life of the individualman to the growing power, efficiency, knowledge, happiness,