ABSTRACT
In the last four lectures we have been studying the appearances of the upper regions of the human cave, not merely in their immediate and uncriticized, but in their more fully reflected, revised forms and semblances. We saw that, suspended above the first-order existences of the bodily realm, and the second-order existences of the realm of mind whose primary concern is these first-order existences, is a realm of intellectual values and ideals, and of abstract objects cut and trimmed to match them, which gather together and arrange and simplify all that is to be found in the lower spheres in question. There are values and ideals of the selectively simple and the endlessly enriched, of the limiting and pointed and the embracing and comprehensive, of what is true to the detail of empirical encounter and of what is loyal only to the distinctive and significant and so forth, and in obedience to such values and ideals minds retract themselves to various thin-edged abstractions or spread and blur themselves in various rough, open-textured notions. All these intellectual ideals specify a basic endeavour or nisus to rise above the contingencies of individual encounter and personal perspective, to approach things in manners which pertain to mind, reason, intelligence as such rather than to minds, reasoners or intelligences. They also express a deep-set preference for consciously constructed, deliberately sealed-off intentional objects as against those merely culled from experience, thereby achieving that mastery over the empirical and the existent which is only open to those who are not too considerate of the latter.
