n, and believing perception
to be subjective, he had to choose between the relegation of being to a
region inaccessible to knowledge, and the definition of being in terms
of subjectivity. To avoid scepticism he accepted the latter alternative.
But among the Greeks with whom this theory of perception originated, it
drew its meaning in large part from the distinction between perception
and reason. Thus we read in Plato's "Sophist":

"And you would allow that we participate in generation with
the body, and by perception; but we participate with the soul
by thought in true essence, and essence you would affirm to be
always the same and immutable, whereas generation
varies."[370:8]

It is conceived that although in perception man is condemned to a
knowledge conditioned by the affections and station of his body, he may
nevertheless escape himself and lay hold on the "true essence" of
things, by virtue of thought. In other words, knowledge, in
contradistinction to "opinion," is not made by the subject, but is the
soul's participation in the eternal natures of things. In the moment of
insight the varying course of the individual thinker coincides with the
unvarying truth; but in that moment the individual thinker is ennobled
through being assimilated to the truth, while the truth is no more, no
less, the truth than before.

[Sidenote: The Principle of Subjectivism Extended to Reason.]

Sect. 183. In absolute idealism, the principle of subjectivism is
extended to reason itself. This extension seems to have been originally
due to moral and religious interests. From the moral stand-point the
contemplation of the truth is a _state_, and the highest state of the
individual life. The religious interest unifies the individual life and
directs attention to its spiritual development. Among the Greeks of the
middle period life was as yet viewed objectively as the fulfilment of
capacities, and knowledge was regarded as perfection of function, the
exercise of the highest of human prerogatives. But as moral and
religious interests became more absorbing, the individual lived more and
more in his own self-consciousness. Even before the Christian era the
Greek philosophers themselves were preoccupied with the task of winning
a state of inner serenity. Thus the Stoics and Epicureans came to look
upon knowledge as a means to the attainment of an inner freedom from
distress and bondage to the world. In other words, th