ENDS AND MEANS
to modify their being, so that they can have direct know-
ledge of it, is not, as we have seen, a personality. Since
it is not personal, it is illegitimate to attribute to it ethical
qualities. 'God is not good/ said Eckhart. *I am good.'
Goodness is the means by which men and women can
overcome the illusion of being completely independent
existents and can raise themselves to a level of being upon
which it becomes possible, by recollection and meditation,
to realize the fact of their oneness with ultimate reality,
to know and in some measure actually associate themselves
with it. The ultimate reality is *the peace of God which
passeth all understanding'; goodness is the way by which
it can be approached. * Finite beings,' in the words of
Royce, 'are/ always such as they are in virtue of an
inattention which at present blinds them to their actual
relations to God and to one another/ That inattention is
the fruit, in Buddhist language, of desire. We fail to
attend to our true relations with ultimate reality and,
through ultimate reality, with our fellow-beings, because
we prefer to attend to our animal nature and to the business
of getting on in the world. That we can never completely
ignore the animal in us or its biological needs is obvious.
Our separateness is not wholly an illusion. The element of
specificity in things is a brute fact of experience* Diversity
cannot be reduced to complete identity even in scientific
and philosophical theory, still less in life which is lived with
bodies, that is to say, with particular patternings of ;the
ultimately identical units of energy. It is impossible in the
nature of things, that no attention should be given to the
animal in us; but in the circumstances of civilized life, it is
certainly unnecessary to give all or most of our attention
to it. Goodness is the method by which we divert our
attention from this singularly wearisome topic of our
animality and our individual separateness. Recollection
and meditation assist goodness in two ways: by producing,
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