But herein is a mystery. For, either we act upon and are recipients of the action of the totality of images or objects in both the sensible and supersensible worlds, or we are so placed in the grand scheme of things that both ourselves and the sphere of our interests and possible actions are closed circuits, hermetically sealed and non-communicative with the other like spheres, which do not and cannot act upon us. There is yet a third possibility--that we are so fashioned, in the entirety of our being, that some part of us is exactly congruent with some part of every sphere of possible actions and interests in the kosmos, and therefore, each of us has being or consciousness of a kind that is keyed to and registering in the totality of such spheres; and that, at present, because our interests and possible actions are limited to the plane of sensibility, we are conscious only there. And further, that although those spheres of our consciousness which are fixed to register in other planes do not answer to the lowest on which we now operate, having a character of which we are unaware, they nevertheless cannot be said not to exist, because of the lack of communication between them. Among these three possible choices, we have no hesitancy in expressing a decided preference for the last mentioned--that the range of our being is co-extensive with the range of reality, and like a pendulum, we oscillate, at long intervals, between two kosmic extremities--nescience and omniscience.
The intellectual consciousness is the touch-stone of realism. It is like a spreading light which, as it expands, reveals previously darkened corners and conditions, only it has power both to reveal and to bring into manifestation. In its present state, man's consciousness is like a searchlight. It illumines and takes cognizance of everything that falls within its scope of motility and is consequently able to study in detail that which it reveals. But that which is beyond its scope is as if it never existed so far as the individual consciousness is concerned. It is not reasonable to predict that the same characteristics that are observable in any given state shall persist throughout all the various scopes through which the consciousness must proceed in its evolutionary expansion. For the scale of kosmic realism is one grand panorama extending from the grossest to the most subtle and refined. While in general the thread of realism may pervade the entire scale it is nevertheless marked by many and diverse changes in its characteristics as it is followed from one stage to another. So that the realistic character of one stage may vary greatly from that which next preceded it or from that which will succeed it. It would appear, therefore, that in passing from one stage of realism to another there need not remain anything but the mere fact of reality in its connection with ultimate reality; for it is obvious that in every condition of realism which may be encountered in the kosmos there must be a basic thread of ultimate reality running through the whole. The entire gamut of realism may accordingly be traversed without the danger of being diverted from the golden thread of realism which thus permeates all. It is always the phenomena of realism with which we are concerned and which we are trying to understand rather than realism itself. It is this that confounds us. If it were not for the phenomena, which is the way realism or life presents itself to our consciousness, we should experience no trouble in discovering the reality, all other things being equal. For the former ever obscures the latter. It is the supreme task of mental evolution to break through the clouds of phenomena in the search for the eternal substratum of reality which runs through the sensible universe of things.