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BuTUR  &  Tanhm, 

Thc  Silwood  Printing  Work^ 

Frohb,  and  Lamdom. 


«•• 


Xibrar?  of  pbUoaopb^ 

EDITED  BY  J.  H.  MVIRHEAD,  M.A. 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


\ 


The  library   OF    PHILOSOPHY   is  in  the  first  I* 

stance  a  contribution  to  the  History  of  Thought  WUle 
much  has  been  done  in  England  in  tracing  the  course  of  evol 
ution  in  nature,  history,  religion,  and  morality,  comparativdj 
little  has  been  done  in  tracing  the  development  of  Thov^ 
upon  these  and  kindred  subjects,  and  yet  "the  evolution  of 
opinion  is  part  of  the  whole  evolution." 

This  Library  will  deal  mainly  with  Modern  Philosophf, 
partly  because  Ancient  Philosophy  has  already  had  a  fair  share 
of  attention  in  this  country  through  the  labours  of  Grote, 
Ferrier,  and  others,  and  more  recently  through  translations, 
from  Zeller ;  partly  because  the  Library  does  not  profess  to 
give  a  complete  history  of  thought. 

By  the  co-operation  of  different  writers  in  carrying  out  this 
plan,  it  is  hoped  that  a  completeness  and  thoroughness  of  treat- 
ment otherwise  unattainable  will  be  secured.-  It  is  believed, 
also,  that  from  writers  mainly  English  and  American  fuller 
consideration  of  English  Philosophy  than  it  has  hitherto  re- 
ceived from  the  great  German  Histories  of  Philosophy  may 
be  looked  for.  In  the  departments  of  Ethics,  Economics,  and 
Politics,  for  instance,  the  contributions  of  English  writers  to 
the  common  stock  of  theoretic  discussion  have  been  especiaDj 
valuable,  and  these  subjects  will  accordingly  have  special  pro- 
minence in  this  undertaking. 

Another  feature  in  the  plan  of  the  Library  is  its  arrai^ 
ment  according  to  subjects  rather  than  authors  and  dateSt 
enabling  the  writers  to  follow  out  and  exhibit  in  a  waj 
hitherto  unattempted  the  results  of  the  logical  development  a 
particular  lines  of  thought. 

The  historical  portion  of  the  Library  is  divided  into  two 
sections,  of  which  the  first  contains  works  upon  the  develop- 
ment of  particular  schools  of  Philosophy,  while  the  second  ex- 
hibits the  history  of  theory  in  particular  departments.  The 
third  series  contains  original  contributions  to  Philosophy,  aad 
the  fourth  translations  of  valuable  foreign  works. 

To  these  have  been  added,  by  way  of  Introduction  to  tbe 
whole  Library,  an  English  translation  of  Erdmann's  "History 
of  Philo-sophy,"  long  since  recognised  in  Germany  as  the 
Iwjst. 

j.    H.   MUIRHEAD, 

Getteral  Editor; 


jALA/i.-i/)  V    PUBLISHED. 

IB  History  of  Philosophy.     By  Dr.  Joiiann  Edoard  Erdmavn. 

Eit^liih  Translalion.      Edited  hy    Wii.i.isrOM  S,    lIouOH,    M.Ph.,    Crofessor   of 
Mental  and  Moral  Philcwophy  and  Logic  in  llie  University  of  Minnesota. 
In  3  vols.,  medium  8vo,  cloth. 
Vol.  I.   Ancient  and  Media;val  Philosophy,  151.       .         .         .     Seaind  Bilition. 

Vol.11.   Modern  Pliilosophy,  I5,f Third  Edition. 

Vol.  III.  Modern  Philosophy  since  Hegel,  \2s.       .  .      Third  Edition. 

Phe  History  of  yEsTHRTic.     By  Bernard  BosANQurr,  M.A.,  LL.D.,  late  Fellow  of 

University  College,  Oxford.  [Second  Series. 

fHE    DEVEt.oi-ME.NT    OF    RATIONAL    THEOLOGY   sincc   Kant.      By    P110FF.SSOK    Otto 
Pfleiderkk,  of  Berlin.  [Second  Serie.s.     Second  Kdition. 

iiLospi'HV  AND  Political  Economy  in  somb  of  their  Historical  Relations.    By 

James  Honar,  M.A.,  LL.U.  [Second  Series. 

'Pearance  ANfc   Reality.     By  F.    H.   Bradley,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  Merton  College, 

Oxford.  [Third  Series. 


LIST    OF    WORKS     IN     PREPARATION. 

FIRST  SEKIES. 

kRLV  Idealism  :  Descartes  to   Leibnitz.     By    \V.   L.    COURTNEY,    M.A.,   LL.D.  (St. 

Andrews),  Fellow  of  New  College,  Oxford. 
{ekman  Idealists:    Kant  to  Hegel.     By  Wm.   Wallace,  M.A.,   NVhyte  Professor  of 

Moral  Philosophy,  University  of  Oxford. 
|oi>EKN   RiiALiSTS  :  Leibnitz,  Hcrb.irt,  Loire.     By  Andrew  Seth,   M.A.,  Professor  of 

Logic  and  English  Literature,  University  of  Edinburgh. 
iNSATiONALisis :  Liiulie  lu  Mill.     By  W.   S.    Hough,  M.Ph.,   Professor  of  Mental  and 

Moral  Philosophy,  University  of  .Vlinncsota,  U.S.A. 
rHK   Utilitarians:  Hume  to  Contemporary  Writers.    By  W.  R.  SoRLEY,  M.A.,  Fellow 

of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  and  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  University  College,  Cardiff. 
Principle  OF  Evolution  in  its  Scientific  and  Philosophical  Aspects.     By  John 

Watson,    LL.D.,    Professor  of    Moral    Philosophy,    University  of   (Queen's   College, 

Kingston,  Canada. 

SECOND   SERIES. 


I 


The  II1S10RV  OK  Psychology:  Empirical  .iiul  Rational,    liy  Robert  Adamson,  M..\., 

LL.D.,  Professor  of  Logic,  University  of  Aberdeen. 
fUE  HisroRV  of  Political  Phikosopiiv.     By  D.  (J.  Ritchie,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  Jesus 

College,   Oxford,   and  J.    H.     .Muiriieaii,    M.A.,     Lecturer    in    Philosophy,    Royal 

Holloway  College,  Egliani,  and  Bedford  College,  London. 
The  History  ok  ihe  Philosophical  Tendencies  of  the  Nineteenth  Century 

By  JosiAH  RoYCF-,  Professor  of  Philosophy,  Harvard  University. 

THIRD  SERIES. 

"■■^^"^^■^^^■^-^^^  • 

tRST  Principles  of  Philosophy.     By  John  Siuart  Mackenzie,   M.A. ,  Fellow  of 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  Assistant  Lecturer  on   Philosophy,  Owen's  College,   Man 
Chester. 

IE  Theory  of  Ethics.     By  Edward  Cairo,  LL.D,,  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy 
University  of  Glasgow. 

PISTEMOLOGY  ;   OR,  ThE  THEORY   OF    KNOWLEDGE,       By  JaMES  WARD,  D.Sc,   LL.U. 

Fellow  and  Lecturer  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 
?rinciple.s  of  Psychology.     By  G.  F,  Stout,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  St.  John's  College 
Cambridge.  \Shortly. 

'PmsciPLES  OF  Instrumental  Logic.     By  John  Dewrv,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Philo 
«ophy.  University  of  Michigan. 

FOURTH  SERIES. 


Sigwart's  LcHiic.     Translated  by  Helen  Dkndv.    a  vols. 


SWAN    SONNENSCHEIN    &    Co.,    LONDON 

MACMILLAN    &    Co.,    NEW    VORK. 

Ui 


APPEARANCE    AND    REAlITY 


PREFACE. 


I  HAVE  described  the  following  work  as  an  essay  in 
metaphysics.  Neither  in  form  nor  extent  does  it 
carry  out  the  idea  of  a  system.  Its  subject  indeed 
is  central  enough  to  justify  the  exhaustive  treatment 
of  every  problem.  But  what  I  have  done  is  in- 
complete, and  what  has  been  left  undone  has  often 
been  omitted  arbitrarily.  The  book  is  a  more  or 
less  desultory  handling  of  perhaps  the  chief  ques- 
tions in  metaphysics. 

There  were  several  reasons  why  1  did  not  attempt 
a  more  systematic  treatise,  and  to  carry  out  even 
what  I  proposed  has  proved  enough  for  my  powers. 
I  began  this  book  in  the  autumn  of  18S7.  and,  after 
writing  the  first  two  fifths  of  it  in  twelve  months, 
then  took  three  years  with  the  remainder.  My 
work  has  been  suspended  several  times  through 
long  intervals  of  compulsory  idleness,  and  I  have 
been  glad  to  finish  it  when  and  how  I  could.  I  do 
not  say  this  to  obviate  criticism  on  a  book  now 
deliberately  published.  Hut,  if  1  had  attempted 
more.  I  should  probably  have  completed  nothing. 

And  in  the  main  I  have  accomplished  all  that  lay 
within  my  compass.  This  volume  is  meant  to  be  a 
critical  discussion  of  first  principles,  and  its  object 
is  to  stimulate  enquiry  and  doubt.  To  originality 
in   any   other   sense   it   makes    no  claim.       If  the 


XII  PREFACE. 

reader  finds  that  on  any  points  he  has  been  led 
once  more  to  reflect,  I  shall  not  have  failed,  so  far 
as  I  can,  to  be  original.  But  I  should  add  that  my 
book  is  not  intended  for  the  beginner.  Its  language 
in  general  I  hope  is  not  over-technical,  but  I  have 
sometimes  used  terms  intelligible  only  to  the 
student.  The  index  supplied  is  not  an  index  but  a 
mere  collection  of  certain  references. 

My  book  does  not  design  to  be  permanent,  and 
will  be  satisfied  to  be  negative,  so  long  as  that  word 
implies  an  attitude  of  active  questioning.  The 
chief  need  of  English  philosophy  is,  I  think,  a 
sceptical  study  of  first  principles,  and  I  do  not  know 
of  any  work  which  seems  to  meet  this  need  suffici- 
ently. By  scepticism  is  not  meant  doubt  about  or 
disbelief  in  some  tenet  or  tenets.  I  understand  by 
it  an  attempt  to  become  aware  of  and  to  doubt  all 
preconceptions.  Such  scepticism  is  the  result  only 
of  labour  and  education,  but  it  is  a  training  which 
cannot  with  impunity  be  neglected.  And  I  know 
no  reason  why  the  English  mind,  if  it  would  but 
subject  itself  to  this  discipline,  should  not  in  our  day 
produce  a  rational  system  of  first  principles.  If  I 
have  helped  to  forward  this  result,  then,  whatever, 
form  it  may  take,  my  ambition  will  be  satisfied. 

The  reason  why  I  have  so  much  abstained  from 
historical  criticism  and  direct  polemics  may  be  briefly 
stated.  I  have  written  for  English  readers,  and  it 
would  not  help  them  much  to  learn  my  relation  to 
German  writers.  Besides,  to  tell  the  truth,  I  do 
not  know  precisely  that  relation  myself.  And, 
though  I  have  a  high  opinion  of  the  metaphysical 
powers  of  the  English  mind,  I   have  not  seen  any 


PREFACE, 


xm 


serious  attempt  in  English  to  deal  systematically 
with  first  principles.  But  things  among  us  are  not 
as  they  were  some  few  years  back.  There  is  no 
established  reputation  which  now  does  much  harm 
to  philosophy.  And  one  is  not  led  to  feel  in  writing] 
that  one  is  face  to  face  with  the  same  dense  body  of 
stupid  tradition  and  ancestral  prejudice.  Dogmatic 
Individualism  is  far  from  having  ceased  to  flourish, 
but  it  no  longer  occupies  the  ground  as  the  one 
accredited  way  of  "  advanced  thinking."  The 
present  generation  is  learning  that  to  gain  educa- 
tion a  man  must  study  in  more  than  one  school. 
And  to  criticise  a  writer  of  whom  you  know  nothing 
is  now,  even  in  philosophy,  considered  to  be  the 
thing  that  it  is.  We  owe  this  improvement  mostly 
to  men  of  a  time  shortly  before  my  own,  and  who 
insisted  well,  if  perhaps  incautiously,  on  tlte  great 
claims  of  Kant  and  Hegel.  But  whatever  other 
influences  have  helped,  the  result  seems  se'cured. 
There  is  a  fair  field  for  any  one  now,  I  believe,  who 
has  anything  to  say.  And  I  feel  no  desire  for  mere 
polemics,  which  can  seldom  benefit  one's  self,  and 
which  seem  no  longer  required  by  the  state  of  our 
philojjophy.  I  would  rather  keep  my  natural  place 
as  a  learner  among  learners. 

If  anything  in  these  pages  suggests  a  more  dog- 
matic frame  of  mind,  I  would  ask  the  reader  not 
hastily  to  adopt  that  suggestion.  I  offer  him  a  set 
of  opinions  and  ideas  in  part  certainly  wrong,  but 
where  and  how  much  I  am  unable  to  tell  him. 
That  is  for  him  to  find  out,  if  he  cares  to  and  if  he 
can.  Would  it  be  better  if  I  hinted  in  effect  that 
he  is  in  danger  of  expecting  more,  and  that  I,  if  I 


XIV  PREFACE, 

chose,  perhaps  might  supply  it  ?  I  have  everywhere 
done  my  best,  such  as  it  is,  to  lay  bare  the  course 
of  ideas,  and  to  help  the  reader  to  arrive  at  a  judg- 
ment on  each  question.  And,  as  I  cannot  suppose 
a  necessity  on  my  part  to  disclaim  infallibility,  I 
have  not  used  set  phrases  which,  if  they  mean  any- 
thing, imply  it.  I  have  stated  my  opinions  as  truths 
whatever  authority  there  may  be  against  them,  and 
however  hard  I  may  have  found  it  to  come  to  an 
opinion  at  all.  And,  if  this  is  to  be  dogmatic,  I 
certainly  have  not  tried  to  escape  dogmatism. 

It  is  difficult  again  for  a  man  not  to  think  too 
much  of  his  own  pursuit.  The  metaphysician 
cannot  perhaps  be  too  much  in  earnest  with  meta- 
physics, and  he  cannot,  as  the  phrase  runs,  take 
himself  too  seriously.  But  the  same  thing  holds 
good  with  every  other  positive  function  of  the 
universe  And  the  metaphysician,  like  other  men, 
is  prone  to  forget  this  truth.  He  forgets  the  narrow 
limitation  of  his  special  province,  and,  filled  by  his 
own  poor  inspiration,  he  ascribes  to  it  an  importance 
not  its  due.  I  do  not  know  if  anywhere  in  my  work 
I  may  seem  to  have  erred  thus,  but  I  am  sure  that 
such  excess  is  not  my  conviction  or  my  habitual 
mood.  And  to  restore  the  balance,  and  as  a  con- 
fession possibly  of  equal  defect,  I  will  venture  to 
transcribe  some  sentences  from  my  note  book.  I 
see  written  there  that  "  Metaphysics  is  the  finding 
of  bad  reasons  for  what  we  believe  upon  instinct, 
but  to  find  these  reasons  is  no  less  an  instinct." 
Of  Optimism  I  have  said  that  "  The  world  is  the 
best  of  all  possible  worlds,  and  everything  in  it  is  a 
necessary  evil."     Eclecticism  I  have  found  preach 


PREFACE.  XV 

that  "  Every  truth  is  so  true  that  any  truth  must  be 
false,"  and  Pessimism  that "  Where  everything  is  bad      '.'.■; 
it  must  be  good  to  know  the  worst,"  or  "  Where  all   '  '' 
is  rotten  it  is  a  man's  work  to  cry  stinking  fish." 
About  the  Unity  of  Science  I   have  set  down  that 
"  Whatever  you  know  it  is  all  one,"  and  of  Intro- 
spection    that   "  The    one     self-knowledge    worth     r. 
having  is  to  know  one's  mind."     The  reader  may    ' 
judge  how  far  these  sentences  form  a  Credo,  and  he 
must  please  himself  again  as  to  how  seriously  he 
takes  a  further  extract :  "  To  love  unsatisfied  the      .' 
world  is   mystery,  a  mystery  which   love  satisfied  \ 

seems  to  comprehend.  The  latter  is  wrong  only 
because  it  cannot  be  content  without  thinking  itself 
right." 

But  for  some  general  remarks  in  justification  of 
metaphysics  I  may  refer  to  the  Introduction. 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS. 


PACKS 


Introduction 1-7 

Preliminary  objections    to    metaphysics    answered. 
The  task  is  not  impossible,  2,  or  indefensible,  3-7. 


Xooft  £.   appearance. 

I.     Primary  and  Secondary  Qualities.        .        .     11-18 

Attempt  to  explain  error  by  taking  primary  qualities 
alone  as  real,  11.  The  secondary  shown  to  be  un- 
real, 12-14.  But  the  primary  have  no  independent 
existence,  14-17,  save  as  useful  fictions,  17-18. 

II.     Substantive  and  Adjective       ....     19-24 

Problem  of  Inherence.  Relation  between  the  thing 
and  its  qualities  is  unintelligible,  19-24. 

III.  Relation  and  Quality ^S-j^ 

I.  Qualities  without  relations  are  unintelligible.  They 
cannot  be  found,  26-27.  They  cannot  be  got  bare 
legitimately,  27-28,  or  at  all,  28-30.      . 

I I.  Qualities  with  relations  are  unintelligible.  They 
cannot  be  resolved  into  relations,  30,  and  the  relations 
bring  internal  discrepancies,  31. 

III.  Relations  with,  or  without,  qualities  are  unin- 
telligible, 32-34. 

IV.  Space  and  Time 35-43 

Their  psychological  origin  is  irrelevant,  35.  Space 
is  inconsistent  because  it  is,  and  is  not,  a  relation,  36-38, 
and  its  connection  with  other  content  is  unintelligible, 
38. 

Time,  as  usually  taken,  has  the  same  vices,  39, 40. 
And  so  has  Time  taken  otherwise,  for  the  "  now "  is 
self-inconsistent,  40-43. 


/!■ 


XVlll  CONTENTS. 

PACES 

V.    Motion  and  Change  and  its  Perception.        44-53 

Motion  is  inconsistent ;  is  not  so  fundamental  as 
f^  I  Change,  44,  45.  Change  is  a  new  instance  of  our  dilem- 
ma and  is  unintelligible,  45-49. 

Perception  of  Succession  is  not  timeless,  49-51.  Its 
true  nature,  51-53. 

VI.    Causation S4-6i 

Effort  to  avoid  the  contradiction  of  Change.    But  the 

Cause  and  its  Effect  are  not  compatible,  54,  55.     Illu- 

<  sory  attempt  at  explanation,  55,  56.    The  Cause  spreads 

'^  to  take  in  all  the  conditions,  and  yet  cannot  be  com- 

L  plete,  56-58.     Its  relation  to  its  effect  is  unintelligible, 

/  58. 

Causal  sequence  must  be,  and  cannot  be,  continuous, 
58-61. 

VII.    Activity 62-70 

Whether  an  original  datum,  or  not,  is  irrelevant,  62. 
It  has  a  meaning  which  implies  change  in  time,  63,  and 
self-caused  change,  64,65.  Passivity  what  and  how 
connected  with  Activity.  Occasion  what,  65.  Condi- 
tion and  Sum  of  Conditions,  66-68. 

Activity  and  Passivity  imply  one  another,  but  are  in- 
consistent, 68-70. 


VIII.    Things 71-74 

Our  previous  results  have  mined  Things,  71.  Things 
must  have  identity  which  is  ideal,  and  so  appearance, 
72,  73.  Everyday  confusion'  as  to  Things'  identity, 
73-74- 


IX.    The  Meanings  of  Self      ....       75-102 

The  Self  at  last,  but  what  does  it  mean  ?  75,  76.  Self 
.  as  body  excluded,  77.  I.  Self  as  total  contents  of  ex- 
perience at  one  moment,  77.  II.  Self  as  average  con- 
tents of  experience,  77-79.  III.  Essential  self,  80^81. 
Personal  identity,  81-86.  IV.  Self  as  Monad,  86-87. 
V.  Self  as  what  interests,  88.  VI.  Self  as  opposed  to 
Not-self,  88-96.  Each  is  a  concrete  group,  89, 90.  But 
does  any  content  belong  solely  to  self,  90^  91,  or  to 
Not-self,  91,  92  ?  Doubtful  cases,  92-94.  Self  and 
Not-self  on  the  whole  are  not  fixed,  95,  96.  Perception 
of  Activity,  its  general  nature,  96-100.  VII.  Self  as 
Mere  Self,  loo-ioi. 


CONTENTS. 


XIX 


(^       X.     The  Reality  of  Self 


103-120 


Self  is  doubtless  a  fact,  but,  as  it  appears,  can  it  be 
real?  103-104.  (a)  Self  as  Feeling  proves  for  several 
reasons  untenable,  104-107.  (i)  Nor  is  self-conscious- 
ness in  better  case,  107-1 1 1.  (1)  Personal  Identity  use- 
less, and  so  also  functional  unity  of  self,  1 12-114.  W 
Self  as  Activity,  Force,  or  Will,  1 14-11 7.  {e)  Self  as 
Monad,  117,  118.     Conclusion,  119,  120. 


Xf.     Phenomen.^lism 


121-126 


Result  so  far,   121.      Phenomen.ilism  as  a  remedy, 

121,  122.    But  it  does  not  include  the  facts,  itself  for  one, 

122.  And  its  elements  are  unintelligible,  123.  And 
difficulty  as  to  past  and  future  and  Identity,  123,  124. 
And  what  are  Laws,  124,  125?   Final  dilemma,  125,  126. 


XII.     Things  in  Themselves 


127-132 


Separation  of  Universe  into  two  hemispheres  is  in- 
defensible, 127-129,  and  only  doubles  our  difficulties, 
129-131.  Appearances  are  facts,  which  somehow  must 
qualify  reality,  131,  132. 


Booh  nn.— TRealtt?. 


XIII.     The  General  Nature  of  Realitv 


135-143 


Result,  so  far,  mainly  negative,  135  ;  but  we  have  an 
absolute  criterion,  136.  Objection  based  on  develop- 
ment, 137.  Our  criterion  is  supreme,  and  not  merely 
negative.  It  Rives  positive  knowledge  about  reality, 
137-140.  Further,  the  Real  is  one  substantially.  Plu- 
rality of  Reals  is  not  possible,  140-143. 


XIV.    'Ihe  General  Nature  of  Reality  (font.)    .     144-161 

The  .■Xbsoluteisone  system,  and  its  matter  is  Experi- 
ence, 144-147,  But  has  it  more  than  theoretical  perfec- 
tion, 147,  148?  Noanswer  from  any  practical  postulate, 
148-155.  Ontological  Argument,  149,  150.  Practical 
and  theoretical  Axioms,  151-154. 

Hut,  indirectly,  theoretical  perfection  seems  to  imply 
perfection  on  all  sides,  153-158. 
I       Our  knowledge  of  the  Absolute  is   incomplete,  but 
I  positive.     Its  sources,  159-161. 


XX  CONTENTS. 


).    XV.    Thought  and  REALixy        ....     162-183 


/     Nature  of  Ideality,  162,  163.    This  visible  in  judg- 


ment through  contrast  of  predicate  with  subject,  163-165. 
Truth  what,  165  ;  is  based  on  Ideality  of  the  Finite, 
165-167. 

Puzzle  about  the  relation  of  thought  to  reality, 
167.  Thought  is  dualistic,  and  its  subject  and  predicate 
are  different,  168-170.  And  if  thought  succeeded  in 
transcending  dualism,  it  would  perish  as  thought,  170- 
172.     But  why  should  it  not  do  so?  173-175. 

But  can  we  maintain  an  Other  to  thought,  175, 176? 
Yes,  if  this  Other  is  what  thought  itself  desires  and  im- 
plies. And  that  is  the  case,  176-180.  The  relational 
form  implies  a  completion  beyond  itself,  180-182.  Our 
Absolute  is  no  Thing-in-itself,  183. 


XVI.     Error 184-196 

A  good  objection  must  be  founded  on  something  dis- 
crepant, not  merely  something  unexplained,  184-186. 
Problem  of  Error.  It  involves  a  dilemma,  186.  Error 
is  Appearance  and  false  Appearance,  187,  188.  It  is  re- 
jected by  Reality  because  it  makes  that  discordant,  188- 
I  191.  But  it  belongs  to  Reality  somehow,  191.  Error 
i .  can  be  made  truth  by  division  and  rearrangement, 
192-194.  And  its  positive  discordance  can  be  absorbed, 
194-196.     This  possible  solution  must  be  real,  196. 


XVII.     Evil    . 197-204 

Main  difficulties  made  by  an   error,  197.      Several 

senses  of  evil.     Evil  as  pain,   198-200 ;   as  failure  to 

'  realize  End,  200,  201 ;  and  as  immorahty,  201-203.     '" 

no  sense  is  it  incompatible  with  the  Absolute.    And 

no  diversity  is  lost  there,  203,  204. 


XVIII.    Temporal  and  Spatial  Appearance        .     205-222 

Time  and  space  are  inexplicable,  but  not  incompatible 
,    with  our  Absolute,  205.     Question  of  origin  irrelevant, 

and  appeal  to  "  fact  of  consciousness  "  idle,  206. 
I       Time  points  to  something  beyond  itself  in  several 
I  ways,  207-310.     It  is  transcended,  2 la 

Unity  of  Time.    There  is  none,  210-214.    My  "  real'' 
world — what,  212.     Direction  of  Time.    There  is  none, 
or  rather  there  may  be  any  number,  214-218.      Se- 
quence in  Causation  is  but  appearance,  218-220. 
Space,  whatever  is  its  ongm,  transcends  itself,  221, 

222. 


CONTENTS. 


XXI 


XIX. — The  This  and  the  Mine 


rACKS 

223-240 


Their  general  nature,  223.  They  are  positive  and 
negative,  224.  Feeling  as  immediate  experience  of 
reality,  224,  225.  The  This  as  feeling  of  reality,  and  as 
positive  fragmeniariness,  226,  237. 

The  This  as  negative.  It  transcends  itself,  227,  228. 
The  This  as  unique  and  as  Self-will,  228,  229. 

Is  there  more  than  content  in  the  This.'  230-233. 
Does  any  content  slick  in  the  This  .■"  233.  No,  it  only 
seems  to  do  so  through  our  failure,  234-240.  The 
"  merely  mine,"  what,  237. 


XX. — Recapitulation 


241-246 


Result  so  far,  241,  242.  Individuality  and  Perfection, 
are  they  merely  negative?  243-24;.  Perfection  and 
quantity,  245.     There  is  but  one  perfect  being,  246. 


XXI. — ^Solipsism 


247-260 


Problem  slated,  247,  248.  The  Experience  appealed 
to  is  Direct  or  Indirect,  248. 

I.  Direct  Experience  does  not  give  my  self  as  sole 
substantive,  248-250. 

II.  But  can  we  transcend  direct  experience  at  all? 
Or  is  the  this-mine  "  unique  "  ?  No,  not  in  sense  of 
"exclusive,"  and  we  are  forced  to  go  beyond,  251-254. 
Then,  if  so,  can  we  stop  at  our  past  and  future  self,  or 
must  we  conclude  also  to  other  souls?  254,  255. 
Neither  can  be  demonstrated,  but  both  depend  on  the 
same  argument,  255-258.  Nor  would  unreality  of  other 
selves  prove  Solipsism,  258.  Everything  is,  and  also 
is  not,  my  experience,  258,  259.  Truths  contained  in 
Solipsism,  260. 


XXII.-Nature 


261-294 


Nature — meaning  of,  and  origin  of  for  us,  261,  262 
In  its  essence  there  is  an  Antinomy.     If  is  rel.iiion  of 
unknown  to  unknown,  263-265.    It  is  a  mere  system  of 
the  conditions  of  some  phenomena,  and  an  inconsistent 
abstraction,  266,  267. 

Is  all  Nature  extended?  267-269.  Is  any  part  of 
Nature  inor^-anic  ?  270-272.  Is  it  all  relative  to  finite 
souls  ?  273-280.  These  questions  not  important,  280, 
281.  Identity  of  Nature,  281-283.  Position  of  physical 
science,  283-286.  Unity  of  Nature,  286-288.  .Solidity, 
288-290.  Infinity  of  Nature,  290-292.  Its  Uniformity, 
292.     Nature  is  contingent,  in  what  sense,  293,  294. 


XXU  CONTENTS. 


PACKS 


XXIII. — Body  and  Soul.        ....     295-358 

They  are  phenomenal  and  furnish  no  ground  for  an 
objection,  295-297.  Body,  what,  297,  298.  Soul,  what, 
298.  It  is  not  the  same  as  experience.  This  shown  from 
point  of  view  of  the  individual,  299-304 ;  and  of  the 
Absolute,  305-307. 

Objections  discussed,  (i)  If  phenomenal,  is  the  soul 
,a  mere  appendage  to  the  organism  ?  Problem  of  con- 
tinuity and  of  dispositions.  The  soul  an  ideal  construc- 
'tion,  307-316.  (2)  Does  the  series  imply  a  transcendent 
j  Ego  ?  316.  (3)  Are  there  psychical  facts  which  are  not 
I  events  .'317-323. 

Relation  of  Body  and  Soul.  They  are  not  one  thing, 
323,  358?  They  are  causally  connected,  324,  325.  One  is 
not  the  idle  adjective  of  the  other,  326-331.  The  true 
view  stated,  333-335  ;  but  the  connection  remains  in- 
explicable, 336,  337.  How  far  can  body  or  soul  be 
independent  ?  337-342. 

Communication  between  Souls,  its  nature,  342-347. 

Identity  of  diverse  souls,  its  nature  and  action, 
347-352.  Identity  within  one  soul,  and  how  far  it  tran- 
scends the  mechanical  view,  353-37. 


XXIV. — Degrees  of  Truth  and  Reality      .     359-400 

The  Absolute  has  no  degrees,  but  this  not  true  of 
Existence,  359,  36a  Truth — nature  of,  360, 361.  It  re- 
mains conditional,  361.  Hence  no  total  truth  or  error, 
only  more  or  less  of  Validity,  362,  363. 

The  Standard,  what.  It  has  two  features  which  are 
essentially  connected,  363-365.  Approach  to  this  mea- 
sures degree  of  relative  truth.  365.  All  thought,  even 
mere  imagination,  has  some  truth,  365-370.  The 
Standard  further  specified,  in  relation  to  mere  pheno- 
mena, 370^  and  to  higher  appearances,  370-372.  No 
other  standard  possible,  372-374.  And  ours  is  appli- 
cable everywhere,  375-377.  The  world  of  Sense,  its 
proper  place.  Neither  mere  Sens»  nor  mere  Thought  is 
real,  378-381.  The  truer  and  more  real  must  appear 
more;  but  in  what  sense.'  381,  382.  « 

Complete  conditions  not  same  as  Reality,  383.  Un- 
seen Nature  and  psychical  Dispositions,  383,  384.  Po- 
tential Existence, what,384-387.  Possibilityand Chance 
and  external  Necessity,  relative  and  absolute,  387-394. 
Degrees  of  Possibility,  394.  The  Ontolo^ical  Proof, 
its  failure  and  justification,  395-397.  Bastard  form  of 
it,  398,  399.     Existence  necessary,  in  what  sense,  40a 

XXV.    Goodness!! 401-454 

Good  and  Evil  and  their  degrees  are  not  illusions,  but 
still  are  appearances,  401,402.     Goodness,  what,  402. 


CONTENTS. 


XXtll 


The  merely  pleasant,  why  not  good,  403.  Pleasure  by 
itself  not  Kot)d,  404-407.  (iood  is  not  the  satisfied 
will,  but  is  in  general  the  approved,  407,  408.  How  far 
is  it  "desirable  "?  408,  409. 

Goodness  is  a  one-sided  inconsistent  aspect  of  per- 
fection, 409,  410.  The  Absolute  both  is  and  is  not 
good,  411,  412. 

Goodness,  moi especially,  as  Self-realization,  412,  413. 
Its  double  aspect  as  Self-sacrifice  and  Self-assertion, 
414.  What  these  are,  415-418.  They  come  together 
but  are  transcended  in  the  Absolute,  419.  But  popular 
Ethics  asseils  each  as  ultimate,  and  hence  necessarily 
fails,  420-429.     Relativity  of  (ioodness,  429,  430. 

Goodness  as  inner  Morality,  431,  432.  U  inconsis- 
tent and  ends  in  nothing  or  in  evil,  432-436. 

The  demands  of  Morality  carry  it  beyond  itself  into 
Religion,  436-438.  What  this  is,  and  how  it  promises 
Siuisfaction,  439-442.  But  it  proves  inconsistent,  and 
is  an  appearance  which  passes  beyond  itself,  442-448 ; 
but  it  is  no  illusion,  448-450.  The  practical  problem 
as  to  religious  truth,  450-453.  Religion  and  Philo- 
sophy, 453.  454. 


XXVI.    The  Absolute  and  its  Appearances  . 


4SS-5'o 


Object  of  this  Chapter,  455-457.  The  chief  modes 
of  Experience  ;  they  all  are  relative,  458.  Pleasure, 
Feeling,  the  Theoretical,  the  Practical,  and  the 
/Esthetic  attitude  are  each  but  appearance,  458-466. 
And  each  implies  the  rest,  466-468. 

Hut  the  Unity  is  not  known  in  deLiil.  Final  Inex- 
plicabilities,  46S-470.  The  universe  cannot  be  reduced 
to  Thought  and  Will,  469.  This  shown  at  length,  470- 
482.  The  universe  how  far  intelligible,  482,  483.  The 
primacy  of  Will  a  delusion,  483-485. 

Appearance,  meaning  of  the  term,  485,  486.  Ap- 
pearances and  the  Absolute,  4S6-489.  Nature,  is  it 
beautiiul  and  adorable  ?  490-495.  Ends  in  Nature— ^a 
question  not  for  Metaphysics,  496,  497.  Philosophy  of 
Nature  what,  496-499. 

Progress,  is  there  any  in  the  Absolute,  499-501  ;  or 
any  life  after  death,  501-510? 


XXVII.     Ultimate  Doubts 


S"-S52 


Is  our  conclusion  merely  possible  ?  5 1 2.  Preliminary 
statement  as  to  possibility  and  doubt.  These  must  rest 
on  positive  knowledge,  512-518. 

This  applied  to  our  Absolute.  It  is  one,  518-522. 
It  is  experience,  522-526.  But  it  docs  not  (properly 
speaking)  consist  of  souls,  526-530;  nor  is  it  (properly) 


XXIV  CONTENTS. 


personal,  531-533.     Can  the  Absolute  be  called  happy? 

533-535- 

Knowledge  is  conditional  or  absolute,  and  sp  is  im- 
possibility, 535-538.  Finite  knowledge  is  all  condi- 
tional, 539-542.  It  varies  in  strength  and  in  corrigi- 
bility,  542,  543- 

Tn  the  end  not  even  absolute  truth  is  quite  true,  and 
yet  the  distinction  remains,  544, 545.  Relation  of  truth 
to  reality,  545-547- 

Our  result  reconciles  extremes,  and  is  just  to  our 
whole  nature,  547-549.  Error  and  illusion,  549,  550. 
The  presence  of  Reality  in  all  appearances,  but  to 
different  degrees,  is  the  last  word  of  philosophy, 
550-552- 


INTRODUCTION. 


The  writer  on  metaphysics  has  a  great  deal  against 
him.  Engaged  on  a  subject  which  more  than  others 
demands  peace  of  spirit,  even  before  he  enters  on 
the  controversies  of  his  own  field,  he  finds  himself 
involved  in  a  sort  of  warfare.  He  is  confronted 
by  prejudices  hostile  to  his  study,  and  he  is  tempted 
to  lean  upon  those  prejudices,  within  hint  and  around 
him,  which  seem  contrary  to  the  first.  It  is  on  the 
preconceptions  adverse  to  metaphysics  in  general 
that  I  am  going  to  make  some  remarks  by  way  of 
introduction.  We  may  agree,  perhaps,  to  understand 
'by  metaphysics  an  attempt  to  know  reality  as  against 
mere  appearance,  or  the  study  of  first  principles  or 
ultimate  truths,  or  again  the  effort  to  comprehend 
the  universe,  not  simply  piecemeal  or  by  fragments, 
but  somehow  as  a  whole.  Any  such  pursuit  will 
encounter  a  number  of  objections.  It  will  have  to 
hear  that  the  knowledge  which  it  desires  to  obtain 
is  impossible  altogether ;  or,  if  possible  in  some 
degree,  is  yet  practically  useless ;  or  that,  at  all 
events,  we  can  want  nothing  beyond  the  old  philo- 
sophies. And  I  will  say  a  few  words  on  these 
arguments  in  their  order. 

(a)  The  man  who  is  ready  to  prove  that  meta- 
physical knowledge  is  wholly  impossible  has  no 
right  here  to  any  answer.  He  must  be  referred  for 
conviction  to  the  body  of  this  treatise.  And  he  can 
hardly  refuse  to  go  there,  since  he  himself  has,  per- 
haps unknowingly,  entered  the  arena.  He  is  a 
brother  metaphysician  with   a  rival  theory  of  first 

.K.  R.  •  n 


INTRODUCTION, 


principles.  And  this  is  so  plain  that  I  must  excuse 
myself  from  dwelling  on  the  point.  To  say  the 
reality  is  such  that  our  knowledge  cannot  reach  it, 
is  a  claim  to  know  reality  ;  to  urge  that  our  know- 
ledge is  of  a  kind  which  must  fail  to  transcend 
appearance,  itself  implies  that  transcendence.  For, 
if  we  had  no  idea  of  a  beyond,  we  should  assuredly 
not  know  how  to  talk  about  failure  or  success.  And 
the  test,  by  which  we  distinguish  them,  must  ob- 
viously be  some  acquaintance  with  the  nature  of  the 
goal.  Nay,  the  would-be  sceptic,  who  presses  on 
us  the  contradictions  of  our  thoughts,  himself  asserts 
dogmatically.  For  these  contradictions  might  be 
ultimate  and  absolute  truth,  if  the  nature  of  the 
reality  were  not  known  to  be  otherwise.  But  this 
introduction  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  a  class  of 
objections  which  are  themselves,  however  unwill- 
ingly, metaphysical  views,  and  which  a  little  acquaint- 
ance with  the  subject  commonly  serves  to  dispel. 
So  far  as  is  necessary,  they  will  be  dealt  with  in 
their  proper  place  :  and  I  will  therefore  pass  to  the 
second  main  argument  against  metaphysics. 

(d)  It  would  be  idle  to  deny  that  this  possesses 
great  force.  "  Metaphysical  knowledge,"  it  insists, 
"  may  be  possible  theoretically,  and  even  actual,  if 
you  please,  to  a  certain  degree  ;  but,  for  all  that,  it 
is  practically  no  knowledge  worth  the  name."  And 
this  objection  may  be  rested  on  various  grounds.  I 
will  state  some  of  these,  and  will  make  the  answers 
which  appear  to  me  to  be  sufficient. 

The  first  reason  for  refusing  to  enter  on  our  field 
is  an  appeal  to  the  confusion  and  barrenness  which 
prevail  there.  "  The  same  problems,"  we  hear  it 
often,  "  the  same  disputes,  the  same  sheer  failure. 
Why  not  abandon  it  and  come  out  ?  Is  there 
nothing  else  more  worth  your  labour  .''  "  To  this  I 
shall  reply  more  fully  soon,  but  will  at  present  deny 
entirely  that  the  problems  have  not  altered.  The 
assertion  is  about  as  true  and  about  as  false  as  would 


INTRODUCTION. 


be  a  statement  that  human  nature  has  not  chantjed. 
And  it  seems  indefensible  when  we  consider  that  in 
history  metaphysics  has  not  only  been  acted  on  by 
the  general  development,  but  has  also  reacted.  But, 
apart  from  historical  questions,  which  are  here  not  in 
place,  I  am  inclined  to  take  my  stand  on  the  admitted 
possibility.  If  the  object  is  not  impossible,  and  the 
adventure  suits  us — what  then  }  Others  far  better 
than  ourselves  have  wholly  failed — so  you  say.  But 
the  man  who  succeeds  is  not  apparently  always  the 
man  of  most  merit,  and  even  in  philosophy's  cold 
world  perhaps  some  fortunes  go  by  favour.  One 
never  knows  until  one  tries. 

But  to  the  question,  if  seriously  I  expect  to  suc- 
ceed, I  must,  of  course,  answer,  No.  I  do  not  sup- 
pose, that  is,  that  satisfactory  knowledge  is  possible. 
How  much  we  can  ascertain  about  reality  will  be 
discussed  in  this  book ;  but  I  may  say  at  once  that  I 
expect  a  very  partial  satisfaction.  I  am  so  bold  as 
to  believe  that  we  have  a  knowledge  of  the  Absolute, 
certain  and  real,  though  I  am  sure  that  our  compre- 
hension is  miserably  incomplete.  But  I  dissent 
emphatically  from  the  conclusion  that,  because  im- 
perfect, it  is  worthless.  And  I  must  suggest  to  the 
objector  that  he  should  open  his  eyes  and  should 
consider  human  nature.  Is  it  possible  to  abstain 
from  thought  about  the  universe  .''  I  do  not  mean 
merely  that  to  every  one  the  whole  body  of 
things  must  come  in  the  gross,  whether  consciously 
or  unconsciously,  in  a  certain  way.  I  mean  that,  by 
various  causes,  even  the  average  man  is  compelled  to 
wonder  and  to  reflect.  To  him  the  world,  and  his 
share  in  it.  is  a  natural  object  of  thought,  and  seems 
likely  to  remain  one.  And  so,  when  poetry,  art,  and 
religion  have  ceased  wholly  to  interest,  or  when  they 
show  no  longer  any  tendency  to  struggle  with  ulti- 
mate problems  and  to  come  to  an  understanding 
with  them  ;  when  the  sense  of  mystery  and  en- 
chantment no  longer  draws  the  mind  to  wander  aim- 


\ 


4  INTRODUCTION. 

/,  lessly  and  to  love  it  knows  not  what ;  when,  in 
jl  short,  twilight  has  no  charm — then  metaphysics 
will  be  worthless.  For  the  question  (as  things  are 
now)  is  not  whether  we  are  to  reflect  and  ponder  on 
ultimate  truth — for  perhaps  most  of  us  do  that,  and 
•  are  not  likely  to  cease.  The  question  is  merely  as 
to  the  way  in  which  this  should  be  done.  And  the 
claim  of  metaphysics  .is  surely  not  unreasonable. 
Metaphysics  takes  its  stand  on  this  side  of  human 
nature,  this  desire  to  think  about  and  comprehend 
reality.  And  it  merely  asserts  that,  if  the  attempt 
is  to  be  made,  it  should  be  done  as  thoroughly  as 
our  nature  permits.  There  is  no  claim  on  its  part 
to  supersede  other  functions  of  the  human  mind  ; 
but  it  protests  that,  if  we  are  to  think,  we  should 
sometimes  try  to  think  properly.  And  the  opponent 
of  metaphysics,  it  appears  to  me,  is  driven  to  a 
dilemma.  He  must  either  condemn  all  reflection 
on  the  essence  of  things, — and,  if  so,  he  breaks, 
or,  rather,  tries  to  break,  with  part  of  the  highest 
side  of  human  nature, — or  else  he  allows  us  to 
think,  but  not  to  think  strictly.  He  permits,  that 
is  to  say,  the  exercise  of  thought  so  long  as  it  is 
entangled  with  other  functions  of  our  being ;  but 
as  soon  as  it  attempts  a  pure  development  of  its 
own,  guided  by  the  principles  of  its  own  distinc- 
tive working,  he  prohibits  it  forthwith.  And  this 
appears  to  be  a  paradox,  since  it  seems  equivalent 
to  saying,  You  may  satisfy  your  instinctive  longing 
to  reflect,  so  long  as  you  do  it  in  a  way  which  is 
unsatisfactory.  If  your  character  is  such  that  in  you 
thought  is  satisfied  by  what  does  not,  and  cannot, 
pretend  to  be  thought  proper,  that  is  quite  legiti- 
mate. But  if  you  are  constituted  otherwise,  and  if 
in  you  a  more  strict  thinking  is  a  want  of  your 
nature,  that  is  by  all  means  to  be  crushed  out. 
And,  speaking  for  myself,  I  must  regard  this  as  at 
once  dogmatic  and  absurd. 

But   the  reader,  perhaps,  may  press   me  with  a 


different  objection.  Admitting,  he  may  say,  that 
thought  about  reaUty  is  lawful,  I  still  do  not  under- 
stand why,  the  results  being  what  they  are,  you 
should  judge  it  to  be  desirable.  And  I  will  try  to 
answer  this  frankly.  I  certainly  do  not  suppose  that 
it  would  be  good  for  every  one  to  study  metaphysics, 
and  I  cannot  express  any  opinion  as  to  the  number 
of  persons  who  should  do  so.  But  I  think  it  quite 
necessary,  even  on  the  view  that  this  study  can  pro- 
duce no  positive  results,  that  it  should  still  be  pur- 
sued. There  is,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  no  other  certain 
way  of  protecting  ourselves  against  dogmatic  super- 
stition. Our  orthodo.\  theology  on  the  one  side, 
and  our  common-place  materialism  on  the  other  side 
(it  is  natural  to  take  these  as  prominent  instances), 
vanish  like  ghosts  before  the  daylight  of  free  scepti- 
cal enquiry.  I  do  not  mean,  of  course,  to  condemn 
wholly  either  of  these  beliefs  ;  but  I  am  sure  that 
either,  when  taken  seriously,  is  the  mutilation  of 
our  nature.  Neither,  as  experience  has  amply 
shown,  can  now  survive  in  the  mind  which  has 
thought  sincerely  on  first  principles ;  and  it  seems 
desirable  that  there  should  be  such  a  refuge  for  the 
man  who  burns  to  think  consistently,  and  yet  is  too 
good  to  become  a  slave,  either  to  stupid  fanaticism 
or  dishonest  sophistry.  That  is  one  reason  why  1 
think  that  metaphysics,  even  if  it  end  in  total  scepti- 
cism, should  be  studied  by  a  certain  number  of 
persons. 

And  there  is  a  further  reason  which,  with  myself 
perhaps,  has  even  more  weight.  All  of  us,  I  pre- 
sume, more  or  less,  are  led  beyond  the  region  of 
ordinary  facts.  Some  in  one  way  and  some  in  others, 
we  seem  to  touch  and  have  communion  with  what  is 
beyond  the  visible  world.  In  various  manners  we 
find  something  higher,  which  both  supports  and 
humbles,  both  chastens  and  transports  us.  And, 
with  certain  persons,  the  intellectual  effort  to  under- 
stand the  universe  is  a  principal  way  of  thus  ex- 


INTRODUCTION. 


periencing  the  Deity.  No  one,  probably,  who  has 
not  felt  this,  however  differently  he  might  describe  it, 
has  ever  cared  much  for  metaphysics.  And,  where- 
ever  it  has  been  felt  strongly,  it  has  been  its  own 
justification.  The  man  whose  nature  is  such  that 
by  one  path  alone  his  chief  desire  will  reach  con- 
summation, will  try  to  find  it  on  that  path,  whatever 
it  maybe,  and  whatever  the  world  thinks  of  it ;  and, 
if  he  does  not,  he  is  contemptible.  Self-sacrifice  is 
too  often  the  "great  sacrifice"  of  trade,  the  giving 
cheap  what  is  worth  nothing.  To  know  what  one 
wants,  and  to  scruple  at  no  means  that  will  get  it, 
may  be  a  harder  self-surrender.  And  this  appears 
to  be  another  reason  for  some  persons  pursuing  the 
study  of  ultimate  truth. 

{c)  And  that  is  why,  lastly,  existing  philosophies 
cannot  answer  the  purpose.  For  whether  there  is 
progress  or  not,  at  all  events  there  is  change  ;  and 
the  changed  minds  of  each  generation  will  require 
a  difference  in  what  has  to  satisfy  their  intellect. 
Hence  there  seems  as  much  reason  for  new  philo- 
sophy as  there  is  for  new  poetry.  In  each  case  the 
fresh  production  is  usually  much  inferior  to  something 
already  in  existence  ;  and  yet  it  answers  a  purpose 
if  it  appeals  more  personally  to  the  reader.  VVhat 
is  really  worse  may  serve  better  to  promote,  in  cer- 
tain respects  and  in  a  certain  generation,  the  exercise 
of  our  best  functions.  And  that  is  why,  so  long  as 
we  alter,  we  shall  always  want,  and  shall  always  have, 
new  metaphysics. 

I  will  end  this  introduction  with  a  word  of  warn- 
ing. I  have  been  obliged  to  speak  of  philosophy  as 
a  satisfaction  of  what  may  be  called  the  mystical  side 
of  our  nature — a  satisfaction  which,  by  certain  per- 
sons, cannot  be  as  well  procured  otherwise.  And  I 
may  have  given  the  impression  that  I  take  the 
metaphysician  to  be  initiated  into  something  far' 
higher  than  what  the  common  herd  possesses.  Such 
a  doctrine  would  rest  on  a   most  deplorable  error. 


INTRODUCTION.  7 

the  superstition  that  the  mere  intellect  is  the  highest 
side  of  our  nature,  and  the  false  idea  that  in  the  in- 
tellectual world  work  done  on  higher  subjects  is  for 
that  reason  higher  work.  Certainly  the  life  of  one 
man,  in  comparison  with  that  of  another,  may  be 
fuller  of  the  Divine,  or,  again,  may  realize  it  with  an 
intenser  consciousness ;  but  there  is  no  calling  or 
pursuit  which  is  a  private  road  to  the  Deity.  And 
assuredly  the  way  through  speculation  upon  ultimate 
truths,  though  distinct  and  legitimate,  is  not  superior 
to  others.  There  is  no  sin,  however  prone  to  it  the 
philosopher  may  be,  which  philosophy  can  justify  so 
little  as  spiritual  pride. 


BOOK    I. 
APPEARANCE. 


CHAPTER  I. 


PRIMARY  AND  SECONDARE    QUALIJIES. 


The  fact  of  illusion  and  error  is  in  various  ways 
forced  early  upon  the  mind ;  and  the  ideas,  by 
which  we  try  to  understand  the  universe,  may  be 
considered  as  attempts  to  set  right  our  failure.  In 
this  division  of  my  work  I  shall  criticize  some  of 
these,  and  shall  endeavour  to  show  that  they  have 
not  reached  their  object.  I  shall  point  out  that  the 
world,  as  so  understood,  contradicts  itself;  and  is 
therefore  appearance,  and  not  reality. 

In  this  chapter  I  will  begin  with  the  proposal  to 
make  things  intelligible  by  the  distinction  between 
primary  and  secondary  qualities.  This  view  is  old, 
but,  I  need  hardly  say,  is  far  from  obsolete,  nor  can 
it  ever  disappear.  From  time  to  time,  without 
doubt,  so  long  as  there  are  human  beings,  it  will 
reappear  as  the  most  advanced  and  as  the  one 
scientific  theory  of  first  principles.  And  I  begin 
with  it,  because  it  is  so  simple,  and  in  the  main  so 
easily  disposed  of  The  primary  qualities  are  those 
aspects  of  what  we  perceive  or  feel,  which,  in  a 
word,  are  spatial ;  and  the  residue  is  secondary.  - 
The  solution  of  the  world's  enigma  lies  in  taking  the 
former  as  reality,  and  everything  else  somehow  as 
derivative,  and  as  more  or  less  justifiable  appear- 
ance. 

The  foundation  of  this  view  will  be  known  to  the 
reader,  but  for  the  sake  of  clearness  I  must  trace  it 
in  outline.     We  assume   that  a  thing  must  be  self- 


12 


APPEARANCE. 


consistent  and  self-dependent  It  either  has  a 
quality  or  has  not  got  it  And,  if  it  has  it,  it  can 
not  have  it  only  sometimes,  and  merely  in  this  or 
that  relation.  But  such  a  principle  is  the  condem- 
nation of  secondary  qualities. 

It  matters  very  little  how  in  detail  we  work  with 
it.  A  thing  is  coloured,  but  not  coloured  in  the 
same  way  to  every  eye  ;  and,  e-\cept  to  some  eye,  it 
seems  not  coloured  at  all.  Is  it  then  coloured  or 
not  ?  And  the  eye — relation  to  which  appears 
somehow  to  make  the  quality — does  that  itself 
possess  colour  ?  Clearly  not  so,  unless  there  is 
another  eye  which  sees  it.  Nothing  therefore  is 
really  coloured  ;  colour  seems  only  to  belong  to 
what  itself  is  colourless.  And  the  same  result  holds, 
again,  with  cold  and  heat.  A  thing  may  be  cold  or 
hot  according  to  different  parts  of  my  skin  ;  and, 
without  some  relation  to  a  skin,  it  seems  without  any 
such  quality.  And,  by  a  like  argument,  the  skin  is 
proved  not  itself  to  own  the  quality,  which  is  hence 
possessed  by  nothing.  And  sounds,  not  heard,  are 
hardly  real  ;  while  what  hears  them  is  the  ear,  it- 
self not  audible,  nor  even  always  in  the  enjoyment 
of  sound.  With  smell  and  with  taste  the  case  seems 
almost  worse  ;  for  they  are  more  obviously  mixed 
up  with  our  pleasure  and  pain.  If  a  thing  tastes 
only  in  the  mouth,  is  taste  its  quality  ?  Has  it 
smell  where  there  is  no  nose  ?  But  nose  and 
tongue  are  smelt  or  tasted  only  by  another  nose  or 
tongue  ;  nor  can  either  again  be  said  to  have  as  a 
quality  what  they  sometimes  enjoy.  And  the 
pleasant  and  disgusting,  which  we  boldly  locate  in 
the  object,  how  can  they  be  there  ?  Is  a  thing 
delightful  or  sickening  really  and  in  itself  ?  Am 
even  I  the  constant  owner  of  these  wandering 
adjectives  .-' — But  1  will  not  weary  the  reader  by 
insistence  on  detail.  The  argument  shows  every- 
where that  things  have  secondary  qualities  only  for 
an    organ ;    and    that   the   organ    itself    has    these 


PRIMARY    AND    SECONDARY    QUALITIES. 


•3 


qualities  in  no  other  way.  They  are  found  to  be 
adjectives,  somehow  supervening  on  relations  of  the 
extended.  The  extended  only  is  real.  And  the 
facts  of  what  is  called  subjective  sensation,  under 
which  we  may  include  dream  and  delusion  of  all 
kinds,  may  be  adduced  in  support.  They  go  to 
show  that,  as  we  can  have  the  sensation  without  the 
object,  and  the  object  without  the  sensation,  the 
one  cannot  possibly  be  a  quality  of  the  other.  The 
secondary  qualities,  therefore,  are  appearance, 
coming  from  the  reality,  which  itself  has  no  quality 
but  extension. 

This  argument  has  two  sides,  a  negative  and  a 
positive.  The  first  denies  that  secondary  qualities 
are  the  actual  nature  of  things,  the  second  goes  on 
to  make  an  affirmation  about  the  primary.  I  will 
enquire  first  if  the  negative  assertion  is  justified.  I 
will  not  dispute  the  truth  of  the  principle  that,  if  a 
thing  has  a  quality,  it  must  have  it ;  but  I  will  ask 
whether  on  this  basis  some  defence  may  not  be 
made.  And  we  may  attempt  it  in  this  way.  All  the 
arguments,  we  may  protest,  do  but  show  defect  in,  or 
interference  with,  the  organ  of  perception.  The 
fact  that  I  cannot  receive  the  secondary  qualities, 
except  under  certain  conditions,  fails  to  prove  that 
they  are  not  there  and  existing  in  the  thing.  And, 
supposing  that  they  are  there,  still  the  argument 
proves  their  absence,  and  is  hence  unsound.  And 
sheer  delusion  and  dreams  do  not  overthrow  this 
defence.  The  qualities  are  constant  in  the  things 
themselves ;  and,  if  they  fail  to  impart  themselves, 
or  impart  themselves  wrongly,  that  is  always  due  to 
something  outside  their  nature.  If  we  could  per- 
ceive them,  they  are  there. 

But  this  way  of  defence  seems  hardly  tenable. 
For,  if  the  qualities  impart  themselves  never  except 
under  conditions,  how  in  the  end  are  we  to  say 
what  they  are  when  unconditioned  ?  Having  once 
begun,   and  having  been  compelled,   to  take  their 


'4 


APPEARANCE. 


appearance  into  the  account,  we  cannot  afterwards 
strike  it  out.  It  being  admitted  that  the  qualities 
come  to  us  always  in  a  relation,  and  always  as 
appearing,  then  certainly  we  know  them  only  as 
appearance.  And  the  mere  supposition  that  in 
themselves  they  may  really  be  what  they  are,  seems 
quite  meaningless  or  self-destructive.  Further,  we 
may  enforce  this  conclusion  by  a  palpable  instance. 
To  hold  that  one's  mistress  is  charming,  ever  and  in 
herself,  is  an  article  of  faith,  and  beyond  reach  of 
question.  But,  if  we  turn  to  common  things,  the 
result  will  be  otherwise.  We  observed  that  the 
disgusting  and  the  pleasant  may  make  part  of  the 
character  of  a  taste  or  a  smell,  while  to  take  these 
aspects  as  a  constant  quality,  either  of  the  thing  or 
of  the  organ,   seems  more  than   unjustifiable,   and 

.  even  almost  ridiculous.  And  on  the  whole  we 
must  admit  that  the  defence  has  broken  down.  The 
secondary  qualities  must  be  judged  to  be  merely 
appearance. 

But  are  they  the  appearance  of  the  primary,  and 
are  these  the  reality .''  The  positive  side  of  the 
contention  was  that  in  the  extended  we  have  the 

^  essence  of  the  thing ;  and  it  is  necessary  to  ask  if 
this  conclusion  is  true.  The  doctrine  is,  of  course, 
materialism,  and  is  a  very  simple  creed.  What  is 
extended,  together  with  its  spatial  relations,  is  sub- 
stantive fact,  and  the  rest  is  adjectival.  We  have 
not  to  ask  here  if  this  view  is  scientific,  in  the  sense 
of  being  necessarily  used  for  work  in  some  sciences. 
That  has,  of  course,  nothing  to  do  with  the  ques- 
tion now  before  us,  since  we  are  enquiring  solely 
whether  the  doctrine  is  true.  And,  regarded  in  this 
way,  perhaps  no  student  would  call  materialism 
scientific. 

1  will  indicate  briefly  the  arguments  against  the 
sole  reality  of  primary  qualities,  {/i)  In  the  first  place, 
we  may  ask  how,  in  the  nature  of  the  extended,  the 
qualities  stand  to  the  relations  which  have  to  hold 


PRIMARY    AND   SECONDARY   QUALITIES. 


15 


'between  them.  This  is  a  problem  to  be  handled 
later  (Chapter  iv.),  and  I  will  only  remark  here  that  its 
result  is  fatal  to  materialism.  And,  (A)  in  the  second 
place,  the  relation  of  the  primary  qualities  to  the 
secondary — in  which  class  feeling  and  thought  have 
presumably  to  be  placed  —  seems  wholly  unin- 
telligible. F"or  nothing  is  actually  removed  from 
existence  by  being  labelled  "appearance."  What 
appears  is  there,  and  must  be  dealt  with  ;  but 
materialism  has  no  rational  way  of  dealing  with 
appearance.  Appearance  must  belong,  and  yet  can- 
not belong,  to  the  extended.  It  neither  is  able  to 
fall  somewhere  apart,  since  there  is  no  other  real 
place  ;  nor  ought  it,  since,  if  so,  the  relation  would 
vanish  and  appearance  would  cease  to  be  derivative. 
But,  on  the  other  side,  if  it  belongs  in  any  sense  to 
the  reality,  how  can  it  be  shown  not  to  infect  that 
with  its  own  unreal  character."'  Or  we  may  urge 
that  matter  must  cease  to  be  itself,  if  (qualified 
essentially  by  all  that  is  secondary.  But,  taken 
otherwise,  it  has  become  itself  but  one  out  of  two 
elements,  and  is  not  the  reality. 

And,  (f)  thirdly,  the  line  of  reasoning,  which 
showed  that  secondary  qualities  are  not  real,  has 
equal  force  as  applied  to  primary.  The  extended 
comes  to  us  only  by  relation  to  an  organ  ;  and, 
whether  the  organ  is  touch  or  is  sight  or  muscle- 
feeling —  or  whatever  else  it  may  be  —  makes  no 
difference  to  the  argument.  For,  in  any  case,  the 
thing  is  perceived  by  us  through  an  affection  of  our 
body,  and  never  without  that.  And  our  body  itself 
is  no  exception,  for  we  perceive  that,  as  extended, 
solely  by  the  action  of  one  part  upon  another  per- 
cipient part.  That  we  have  no  miraculous  intuition 
of  our  body  as  spatial  reality  i«  perfectly  certain. 
But,  if  so,  the  extended  thing  will  have  its  quality 
only  when  perceived  by  something  else ;  and  the 
percipient  something  else  is  again  in  the  same  case. 
Nothing,  in  short,  proves  extended  except  in  relation 


i6 


APPEARANCE. 


to  another  thing,  which  itself  does  not  possess  the 
quality,  if  you  try  to  take  it  by  itself.  And,  further, 
the  objection  from  dream  and  delusion  holds  again. 
That  objection  urges  that  error  points  to  a  necessary 
relation  of  the  object  to  our  knowledge,  even  where 
error  is  not  admitted.  But  such  a  relation  would 
reduce  every  quality  to  appearance.  We  might, 
indeed,  attempt  once  more  here  to  hold  the  former 
line  of  defence.  We  might  reply  that  the  extended 
thing  is  a  fact  real  by  itself,  and  that  only  its  relation 
to  our  percipience  is  variable.  But  the  inevitable 
conclusion  is  not  so  to  be  averted.  If  a  thing  is 
known  to  have  a  quality  only  under  a  certain  con- 
dition, there  is  no  process  of  reasoning  from  this 
which  will  justify  the  conclusion  that  the  thing,  if 
unconditioned,  is  yet  the  same.  This  seems  quite 
certain  ;  and,  to  go  further,  if  we  have  no  other 
source  of  information,  if  the  quality  in  question  is 
non-existent  for  us  except  in  one  relation,  then  for 
us  to  assert  its  reality  away  from  that  relation  is  more 
than  unwarranted.  It  is,  to  speak  plainly,  an  attempt 
in  the  end  without  meaning.  And  it  would  seem 
that,  if  materialism  is  to  stand,  it  must  somehow  get 
to  the  existence  of  primary  qualities  in  a  way  which 
avoids  their  relation  to  an  organ.  But  since,  as  we 
shall  hereafter  see  (Chapter  iv.),  their  very  essence  is 
relative,  even  this  refuge  is  closed. 

(r/)  But  there  is  a  more  obvious  argument  against 
the  sole  reality  of  spatial  qualities  ;  and,  if  I  were 
writing;,'  for  the  people  an  attack  upon  materialism, 
I  should  rest  great  weight  on  this  point.  Without 
secondary  quality  extension  is  not  conceivable,  and 
no  one  can  bring  it,  as  existing,  before  his  mind  if 
he  keeps  it  quite  pure.  In  short,  it  is  the  violent 
abstraction  of  one  aspect  from  the  rest,  and  the 
mere  confinement  of  our  attention  to  a  single  side 
of  things,  a  fiction  which,  forgetting  itself,  takes  a 
ghost  for  solid  reality.  And  I  will  say  a  few  words 
on  this  obvious  answer  to  materialism. 


■ 


PRIMARY    AND    SECONDAI 


That  doctrine,  of  course,  holds  that  the  extended 
can  be  actual,  entirely  apart  from  every  other 
quality.  B.ut  extension  is  never  so  given.  If  it  is 
visual,  it  must  be  coloured ;  and  if  it  is  tactual,  or 
acquired  in  the  various  other  ways  which  may  fall 
under  the  head  of  the  "  muscular  sense," — then  it  is 
never  free  from  sensations,  coming  from  the  skin,  or 
the  joints,  or  the  muscles,  or,  as  some  would  like  to 
add,  from  a  central  source.  And  a  man  may  say 
what  he  likes,  but  he  cannot  think  of  extension 
without  thinking  at  the  same  time  of  a  "  what "  that 
is  extended.  And  not  only  is  this  so,  but  particular 
differences,  such  as  "  up  and  down,"  "  right  and 
left,"  are  necessary  to  the  terms  of  the  spatial  re- 
lation. But  these  differences  clearly  are  not  merely 
spatial.  Like  the  general  "  what,"  they  will  consist 
in  all  cases  of  secondary  quality  from  a  sensation  of 
the  kinds  I  have  mentioned  above.  Some  psycho- 
logists, indeed,  could  go  further,  and  could  urge  that 
the  secondary  qualities  are  original,  and  the  primary 
derivative ;  since  extension  (in  their  view)  is  a  con- 
struction or  growth  from  the  wholly  non-extended. 
I  could  not  quite  say  that,  but  I  can  appeal  to  what 
is  indisputable.  Extension  cannot  be  presented,  or 
thought  of,  except  as  one  with  quality  that  is 
secondary.  It  is  by  itself  a  mere  abstraction,  for 
some  purposes  necessary,  but  ridiculous  when  taken 
as  an  existing  thing.  Yet  the  materialist,  from 
defect  of  nature  or  of  education,  or  probably  both, 
worships  without  justification  this  thin  product  of 
his  untutored  fancy. 

"  Not  without  justification,"  he  may  reply,  "since 
in  the  procedure  of  science  the  secondary  qualities 
are  explained  as  results  from  the  primary.  Obviously, 
therefore,,  tfffise  latter  are  independent  and  prior." 
But  this  is  a  very  simple  error.  For  suppose  that 
you  ha've  shown  that,  given  one  element,  ^,  an- 
other, d,  does  in  fact  follow  on  it ;  suppose  that  you 
can  prove  that  d  comes  just  the  same,  whether  A  is 

A  R.  c 


1 8  APPEARANCE. 

attended  by  c,  or  d,  or  e,  or  any  one  of  a  number 
of  other  qualities,  you  cannot  go  from  this  to  the  re- 
sult that  A  exists  and  works  naked.  The  secondary 
b  can  be  explained,  you  urge,  as  issuing  from  the 
primary  A,  without  consideration  of  aught  else.  Let 
it  be  so  ;  but  all  that  could  follow  is,  that  the  special 
natures  of  A's  accompaniments  are  not  concerned 
in  the  process.  There  is  not  only  no  proof,  but  there 
is  not  even  the  very  smallest  presumption,  that  ^ 
could  act  by  itself,  or  could  be  a  real  fact  if  alone. 
It  is  doubtless  scientific  to  disregard  certain  aspects 
when  we  work  ;  but  to  urge  that  therefore  such  as- 
pects are  not  fact,  and  that  what  we  use  without 
r^jard  to  them  is  an  independent  real  thing, — this 
is  barbarous  metaphysics. 

We  have  found  then  that,  if  the  secondary  quali- 
ties are  appearance,  the  primary  are  certainly  not 
able  to  stand  by  themselves.  This  distinction,  from 
which  materialism  is  blindly  developed,  has  been 
seen  to  bring  us  no  nearer  to  the  true  nature  of 
reality. 


CHAPTER   11. 


•  SUBSTANTIVE  AND  ADJECTIVE. 

We  have  seen  that  the  distinction  of  primary  from 
secondary  qualities  has  not  taken  us  far.  Let  us, 
without  regard  to  it,  and  once  more  directly  turning 
to  what  meets  us,  examine  another  way  of  making 
that  intelligible.  We  find  the  world's  contents 
grouped  into  things  and  their  qualities.  The  sub- 
stantive and  adjective  is  a  time-honoured  distinction 
and  arrangement  of  facts,  with  a  view  to  understand 
them,  and  to  arrive  at  reality.  I  must  briefly  point 
out  the  failure  of  this  method,  if  regarded  as  a  serious 
attempt  at  theory. 

We  may  take  the  familiar  instance  of  a  lump  of 
sugar.  This  is  a  thing,  and  it  has  properties,  adjec- 
tives which  qualify  it.  It  is,  for  example,  white,  and 
hard,  and  sweet.  The  sugar,  we  say,  is  all  that ;  but 
what  the  is  can  really  mean  seems  doubtful.  A  thing 
is  not  any  one  of  its  qualities,  if  you  take  that  quality 
by  itself;  if  "sweet"  were  the  same  as  "simply 
sweet,"  the  thing  would  clearly  be  not  sweet.  And, 
again,  in  so  far  as  sugar  is  sweet  it  is  not  white  or 
hard ;  for  these  properties  are  all  distinct.  Nor, 
again,  can  the  thing  be  all  its  properties,  if  you  take 
them  each  severally.  Sugar  is  obviously  not  mere 
whiteness,  mere  hardness,  and  mere  sweetness  ;  for 
its  reality  lies  somehow  in  its  unity.  But  if,  on  the 
other  hand,  we  inquire  what  there  can  be  in  the 
thing  beside  its  several  qualities,  we  are  baffled  once 
more.  We  can  discover  no  real  unity  existing  out- 
side these  qualities,  or,  again,  existing  within  them. 


20  APPEARANCE. 

But  it  is  our  emphasis,  perhaps,  on  the  aspect  of 
unity  which  has  caused  this  confusion.  Sugar  is,  of 
course,  not  the  mere  plurality  of  its  different  adjec- 
i  tives  ;  but  why  should  it  be  more  than  its  properties 
I  in  relation  ?  When  "  white,"  "  hard,"  "  sweet,"  and 
the  rest  co-exist  in  a  certain  way,  that  is  surely  the 
secret  of  the  thing.  The  qualities  are,  and  are  in  re- 
lation. But  here,  as  before,  when  we  leave  phrases 
we  wander  among  puzzles.  "  Sweet,"  "  white,"  aqd 
"  hard  "  seem  now  the  subjects  about  which  we  are 
j  saying  something.  We  certainly  do  not  predicate 
■  one  of  the  other  ;  for,  if  we  attempt  to  identify  them, 
they  at  once  resist.  They  are  in  this  wholly  incom- 
patible, and,  so  far,  quite  contrary.  Apparently, 
then,  a  relation  is  to  be  asserted  of  each.  One 
quality,  A,  is  in  relation  with  another  quality,  B. 
But  what  are  we  to  understand  here  by  is  ?  We 
do  not  mean  that  "  in  relation  with  B  "  is  A,  and  yet 
we  assert  that  A  is  "in  relation  with  B."  In  the 
same  way  C  is  called  "  before  D,"  and  E  is  spoken  of 
as  being  "  to  the  right  of  /^"  We  say  all  this,  but 
from  the  interpretation,  then  "  before  D"  is  C,  and 
"  to  the  right  of  F"is  £,  we  recoil  in  horror.  No,  we 
should  reply,  the  relation  is  not  identical  with  the 
thing.  It  is  only  a  sort  of  attribute  which  inheres 
or  belongs.  The  word  to  use,  when  we  are  pressed, 
should  not  be  is,  but  only  Aas.  But  this  reply  comes 
to  very  little.  The  whole  question  is  evidently  as  to 
the  meaning  of  Aas ;  and,  apart  from  metaphors  not 
taken  seriously,  there  appears  really  to  be  no  answer. 
And  we  seem  unable  to  clear  ourselves  from  the  old 
dilemma,  If  you  predicate  what  is  different,  you  as- 
cribe to  the  subject  what  it  is  noi  ;  and  if  you  predi- 
cate what  is  uoi  different,  you  say  nothing  at  all. 

Driven  forward,  we  must  attempt  to  modify  our 
statement.  We  must  assert  the  relation  now,  not  of 
one  term,  but  of  both.  A  and  B  are  identical  in  such 
a  point,  and  in  such  another  point  they  differ ;  or, 
again,  they  are  so  situated  in  space  or  in  time.     And 


SUnSTANTIVE    AND    ADJECTIVE. 


21 


thus  we  avoid  is,  and  keep  to  are.  But,  seriously, 
that  does  not  look  like  the  explanation  of  a  difficulty  ; 
it  looks  more  like  trifling  with  phrases.  For,  if  you 
mean  that  A  and  B,  taken  each  severally,  even 
"  have  "  this  relation,  you  are  asserting  what  is  false. 
But  if  you  mean  that  A  and  B  in  such  a  relation  are 
so  related,  you  appear  to  mean  nothing.  For  here, 
as  before,  if  the  predicate  makes  no  difference,  it  is 
idle  ;  but,  if  it  makes  the  subject  other  than  it  is,  it  is 
false. 

But  let  us  attempt  another  exit  from  this  be- 
wildering circle.  Let  us  abstain  from  making  the 
relation  an  attribute  of  the  related,  and  let  us  make  it 
more  or  less  independent.  "  There  is  a  relation  C, 
in  which  A  and  B  stand  ;  and  it  appears  with  both 
of  them."  But  here  again  we  have  made  no  pro- 
gress. The  relation  C  has  been  admitted  different 
from  A  and  B,  and  no  longer  is  predicated  of  them. 
Something,  however,  seems  to  be  said  of  this  relation 
C  and  said,  again,  of  A  and  B.  And  this  something 
is  not  to  be  the  ascription  of  one  to  the  other.  If  so, 
it  would  appear  to  be  another  relation,  D,  in  which 
C,  on  one  side,  and,  on  the  other  side,  A  and  B, 
stand.  But  such  a  makeshift  leads  at  once  to  the  in- 
finite process.  The  new  relation  D  can  be  predicated 
in  no  way  of  C,  or  of  A  and  B  ;  and  hence  we  must 
have  recourse  to  a  fresh  relation,  E,  which  comes 
between  D  and  whatever  we  had  before.  But  this 
must  lead  to  another,  F\  and  so  on,  indefinitely. 
Thus  the  problem  is  not  solved  by  taking  relations 
as  independently  real.  For,  if  so,  the  qualities  and 
their  relation  fall  entirely  apart,  and  then  we  have 
said  nothing.  Or  we  have  to  make  a  new  relation 
between  the  old  relation  and  the  terms  ;  which,  when 
it  is  made,  does  not  help  us.  It  either  itself  demands 
a  new  relation,  and  so  on  without  end,  or  it  leaves 
us  where  we  were,  entangled  in  difficulties. 

The  attempt  to  resolve  the  thing  into  properties, 

somehow 


each  a  real  thing,  taken 


together  with  in- 


22 


APPEARANCE. 


dependent  relations,  has  proved  an  obvious  failure. 
And  we  are  forced  to  see,  when  we  reflect,  that  a 
relation  standing  alongside  of  its  terms  is  a  delu- 
sion.. If  it  is  to  be  real,  it  must  be  so  somehow  at 
the  expense  of  the  terms,  or,  at  least,  must  be  some- 
thing which  appears  in  them  or  to  which  they  belong. 
A  relation  between  A  and  -/?  implies  really  a  substan- 
tial foundation  within  them.  This  foundation,  if  we 
say  that  A  is  like  to  B,  is  the  identity  A'  which  holds 
these  difterences  together.  And  so  with  space  and 
time — everywhere  there  must  be  a  whole  embracing 
what  is  related,  or  there  would  be  no  differences  and 
no  relation.  It  seems  as  if  a  reality  possessed  differ- 
ences, A  and  B,  incompatible  with  one  another  and 
also  with  itself.  And  so  in  order,  without  contra- 
diction, to  retain  its  various  properties,  this  whole 
consents  to  wear  the  form  of  relations  between  them. 
And  this  is  why  qualities  are  found  to  be  some  in- 
compatible and  some  compatible.  They  are  all 
different,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  because  belonging 
to  one  whole,  are  all  forced  to  come  together.  And 
it  is  only  where  they  come  together  distantly  by  the 
help  of  a  relation,  that  they  cease  to  conftict.  On  the 
other  hand,  where  a  thing  fails  to  set  up  a  relation 
between  its  properties,  they  are  contrary  at  once. 
Thus  colours  and  smells  live  together  at  peace  in  the 
reality ;  for  the  thing  divides  itself,  and  so  leaves 
them  merely  side  by  side  within  itself.  But  colour 
collides  with  colour,  because  their  special  identity 
drives  them  together.  And  here  again,  if  the  iden- 
tity becomes  relational  by  help  of  space,  they  are 
outside  one  another,  and  are  peaceful  once  more. 
The  "contrary,"  in  short,  consists  of  differences  pos- 
sessed by  that  which  cannot  find  the  relation  which 
serves  to  couple  them  apart.  It  is  marriage  at- 
tempted without  a  modus  Vivendi.  But  where  the 
whole,  relaxing  its  unity,  takes  the  form  of  an  ar- 
rangement, there  is  co-existence  with  concord. 

I  have  set  out  the  above  mainly  because  of  the 


SUBSTANTIVE   AND   ADJECTIVE. 


23 


light  which  it  throws  upon  the  nature  of  the  "  con- 
trary." It  affords  no  solution  of  our  problem  of  inher- 
ence. It  tells  us  how  we  are  forced  to  arrange  things 
in  a  certain  manner,  but  it  does  not  justify  that  ar- 
rangement. The  thing  avoids  contradiction  by  its  dis- 
appearance into  relations,  and  by  its  admission  of  the 
adjectives  to  a  standing  of  their  own.  But  it  avoids 
contradiction  by  a  kind  of  suicide.  It  can  give  no 
rational  account  of  the  relations  and  the  terms  which 
it  adopts,  and  it  cannot  recover  the  real  unity,  with- 
out which  it  is  nothing.  The  whole  device  is  a  clear 
makeshift.  It  consists  in  saying  to  the  outside 
world,  "  I  am  the  owner  of  these  my  adjectives," 
and  to  the  properties,  "  1  am  but  a  relation,  which 
leaves  you  your  liberty."  And  to  itself  and  for  itself 
it  is  the  futile  pretence  to  have  both  characters  at 
once.  Such  an  arrangement  may  work,  but  the 
theoretical  problem  is  not  solved. 

The  immediate  unity,  in  which  facts  come  to  us, 
has  been  broken  up  by  experience,  and  later  by 
reflection.  The  thing  with  its  adjectives  is  a  device 
for  enjoying  at  once  both  variety  and  concord. 
But  the  distinctions,  once  made,  fall  apart  from  the 
thing,  and  away  from  one  another.  And  our 
attempt  to  understand  their  relations  brought  us 
round  merely  to  an  unity,  which  confesses  itself  a 
pretence,  or  else  falls  back  upon  the  old  undivided 
substance,  which  admits  of  no  distinctions.  We 
shall  see  the  hopelessness  of  its  dilemma  more 
clearly  when  we  have  examined  how  relation  stands 
to  quality.      But  this  demands  another  chapter. 

I  will,  in  conclusion,  dispose  very  briefly  of  a 
possible  suggestion.  The  distinctions  taken  in  the 
thing  are  to  be  held  only,  it  may  be  urged,  as  the 
ways  in  which  we  regard  it  The  thing  itself 
maintains  its  unity,  and  the  aspects  of  adjective 
and  substantive  are  only  our  points  of  view. 
Hence  they  do  no  injury  to  the  real.  But  this 
defence  is  futile,  since  the  question  is  how  without 


24  APPEARANCE. 

error  we  may  think  of  reality.  If  then  your  col- 
lection of  points  of  view  is  a  defensible  way  of  so 
thinking,  by  all  means  apply  it  to  the  thing,  and 
make  an  end  of  our  puzzle.  Otherwise  the  thing, 
without  the  points  of  view,  appears  to  have  no 
character  at  all,  and  they,  without  the  thing,  to 
possess  no  reality — even  if  they  could  be  made 
compatible  among  themselves,  the  one  with  .the 
other.  In  short,  this  distinction,  drawn  between 
the  fact  and  our  manner  of  regarding  it,  only  serves 
to  double  the  original  confusion.  There  will  now 
be  an  inconsistency  in  my  mind  as  well  as  in  the 
thing;  and,  far  from  helping,  the  one  will  but 
aggravate  the  other. 


CHAPTER    III. 


RELATION  AND  QUALITY. 


It  must  have  become  evident  that  the  problem, 
discussed  in  the  last  chapter,  really  turns  on  the 
respective  natures  of  quality  and  relation.  And  the 
reader  may  have  anticipated  the  conclusion  we  are 
now  to  reach.  The  arrangement  of  given  facts  into^ 
relations  and  qualities  may  be  necessary  in  practice, 
but  it  is  theoretically  unintelligible.  The  reality,  so 
characterized,  is  not  true  reality,  but  is  appearance.  ;; 

And  it  can  hardly  be  maintained  that  this  char- 
acter calls  for  no  understanding — that  it  is  an  unique 
way  of  being  which  the  reality  possesses,  and  which 
we  have  got  merely  to  receive.  For  it  most  evid- 
ently has  ceased  to  be  something  quite  immediate. 
It  contains  aspects  within  itself  which  plainly  are 
differences,  and  which  tend,  so  far  as  we  see,  to  a 
further  separation.  And,  if  the  reality  really  has  a 
way  of  uniting  these  in  harmony,  that  way  assuredly 
is  not  manifest  at  first  siofht.  On  our  own  side 
those  distinctions,  which  even  consciously  we  make, 
may  possibly  in  some  way  give  the  truth  about 
reality.  But,  so  long  as  we  fail  to  justify  them  and 
to  make  them  intelligible  to  ourselves,  we  are 
bound,  so  far,  to  set  them  down  as  mere  appear- 
ance 

The  object  of  this  chapter  is  to  show  that  the 
very  essence  of  these  ideas  is  infected  and  con- 
tradicts itself.  Our  conclusion  briefly  will  be 
this.  Relation  presupposes  quality,  and  quality 
relation.     Each  can  be  something  neither  together 


•1 


* 

API'EARANCE. 

apart 

from, 

the 

other ; 

and 

the  ^ 

iricious 

which 

they 

turn 

is   not 

the 

truth 

about 

26 


with,  nor 
circle  in 
reality. 

C  1.  Qualities  are  nothing  without  relations.  In 
trying  to  exhibit  the  truth  of  this  statement,  I  will 
lay  no  weight  on  a  considerable  mass  of  evidence. 
This  would  be  furnished  by  psychology,  and  would 
show  how  qualities  are  variable  by  changes  of  rela- 
tion. The  differences  we  perceive  are  in  many 
cases  created  by  such  changes.  But  I  will  not 
appeal  to  such  an  argument,  since  I  do  not  see  that 
it  could  prove  wholly  the  non-existence  of  original 
and  independent  qualities.  And  the  line  of  proof 
through  the  necessity  of  contrast  for  perception 
has,  in  my  opinion,  been  carried  beyond  logical 
limits.  Hence,  though  these  considerations  have 
without  doubt  an  important  bearing  on  our  problem, 
I  prefer  here  to  disregard  them.  And  I  do  not 
think  that  they  are  necessary. 

We  may  proceed  better  to  our  conclusion  in  the 
following  way.  You  can  never,  we  may  argue,  find 
qualities  without  relations.  Whenever  you  take 
them  so,  they  are  made  so,  and  continue  so,  by 
an  operation  which  itself  implies  relation.  Their 
plurality  gets  for  us  all  its  meaning  through  rela- 
tions ;  and  to  suppose  it  otherwise  in  reality  is 
wholly  indefensible.  I  will  draw  this  out  in  greater 
detail. 

To  find  qualities  without  relations  is  surely  im- 
possible. In  the  field  of  consciousness,  even  when 
we  abstract  from  the  relations  of  identity  and  dif- 
ference, they  are  never  independent.  One  is  to- 
gether with,  and  related  to,  one  other,  at  the  least, 
— in  fact,  always  to  more  than  one.  Nor  will  an 
appeal  to  a  lower  and  undistinguished  state  of  mind, 
where  in  one  feeling  are  many  aspects,  assist  us  in 
I  admit  the  existence  of  such  states  with- 
relation,  but  I  wholly  deny  there  the 
of  qualities.      For   if  these  felt  aspects, 


any  way. 
out  any 
presence 


RELATION    AND    QUALITY. 


27 


•while  merely  felt,  are  to  be  called  qualities  at  all, 
they  are  so  only  for  the  observation  of  an  outside 
observer.  And  then  for  him  they  are  given  as 
aspects — that  is,  together  with  relations.  In  short,  if 
you  go  back  to  mere  unbroken  feeling,  you  have  no 
relations  and  no  qualities.  But  if  you  come  to  what 
is  distinct,  you  get  relations  at  once. 

I  presume  we  shall  be  answered  in  this  way — 
Even  though,  we  shall  be  told,  qualities  proper  can 
not  be  discovered  apart  from  relations,  that  is  no 
real  disproof  of  their  separate  existence.  Por  we 
are  well  able  to  distinguish  them  and  to  consider 
them  by  themselves.  And  for  this  perception 
certainly  an  operation  of  our  minds  is  required.  So 
far,  therefore,  as  you  say,  what  is  different  must  be 
distinct,  and,  in  consequence,  related.  But  this 
relation  does  not  really  belong  to  the  reality.  The 
relation  has  existence  only  for  us,  and  as  a  way  of 
our  getting  to  know.  But  the  distinction,  for  all 
that,  is  based  upon  differences  in  the  actual  ;  and 
these  remain  when  our  relations  have  fallen  away 
or  have  been  removed. 

But  such  an  answer  depends  on  the  separation  of 
product  from  process,  and  this  separation  seems 
indefensible.  The  qualities,  as  distinct,  are  always  \ 
made  so  by  an  action  which  is  admitted  to  imply  \ 
relation.  They  are  made  so,  and,  what  is  more,  ' 
they  are  emphatically  kept  so.  And  you  cannot 
ever  get  your  product  standing  apart  from  its 
process.  Will  you  say,  the  process  is  not  essential  ? 
But  that  is  a  conclusion  to  be  proved,  and  it  is 
monstrous  to  assume  it.  Will  you  try  to  prove  it 
by  analogy  .''  It  is  possible,  no  doubt,  to  have  a 
process  which  does  not  affect,  and  is  not  necessary 
to,  the  inner  nature  of  an  object.  But  has  such  a 
generality  much  application  here  ?  Will  you  in- 
stance mental  operations,  such  as  comparison  of  the 
distinct,  and  urge  that  in  these  the  results  are 
independent  of  the   processes  .''       Here,    while  for 


28 


APPEARANCE. 


argument's  sake  admitting  what  it  would  be  easy  to 
dispute,  I  must  point  out  that  the  result  of  the 
process  is  a  relation.  But  I  cannot  believe  that 
this  is  a  matter  to  be  decided  by  analogy,  for  the 
whole  case  is  briefly  this.  There  is  an  operation 
which,  removing  one  part  of  what  is  given,  presents 
the  other  part  in  abstraction.  This  result  is  never 
to  be  found  anywhere  apart  from  a  persisting  ab- 
straction. And,  if  we  have  no  further  information, 
I  can  find  no  excuse  for  setting  up  the  result  as 
being  fact  without  the  process.  The  burden  lies 
wholly  on  the  assertor,  and  he  fails  entirely  to 
support  it.  The  argument  that  in  perception  one 
quality  must  be  given  first  and  before  others,  and 
therefore  cannot  be  relative,  is  hardly  worth 
mentioning.  What  is  more  natural  than  for  quali- 
ties always  to  have  come  to  us  in  some  conjunction, 
and  never  alone  .■* 

We  may  go  further.  Not  only  is  the  ignoring  of 
the  process  a  thing  quite  indefensible — even  if  it 
blundered  into  truth — but  there  is  evidence  that  it 
gives  falsehood.  For  th^  result  bears  internally 
the  character  of  the  process.  The  manyness  of  the 
qualities  cannot,  in  short,  be  reconciled  with  their 
simplicity.  Their  plurality  depends  on  relation, 
and,  without  that  relation,  they  are  not  distinct. 
But,  if  not  distinct,  then  not  different,  and  therefore 
not  qualities. 

I  am  not  urging  that  quality  without  difference  is 
in  every  sense  impossible.  For  all  I  know,  creatures 
may  exist  whose  life  consists,  for  themselves,  in  one 
unbroken  simple  feeling  ;  and  the  arguments  urged 
against  such  a  possibility  in  my  judgment  come 
short.  And,  if  you  want  to  call  this  feeling  a 
quality,  by  all  means  gratify  your  desire.  But  then 
remember  that  the  whole  point  is  quite  irrelevant. 
For  no  one  is  contending  whether  the  universe  is 
or  is  not  a  quality  in  this  sense  ;  but  the  question 
is  entirely  as  to  qualities.      And  a  universe  con- 


RELATION    AND   QUALITY. 


29 


fined  to  one  feeling  would  not  only  not  be  qualities, 
but  it  would  fail   even  to  be  one  quality,  as  different 


from    others  and 
question   is  really 
differences. 
We  have 
found  apart. 


as  distinct  from    relations.     Our 
whether  relation   is  essential  to- 


seen 
We 


that  in  fact  the  two  are  never 
have  seen  that  the  separation  by 
abstraction  ig  no  proof  of  real  separateness.  And 
now  we  have  to  urge,  in  short,  that  any  separateness 
implies  separation,  and  so  relation,  and  is  therefore, 
when  made  absolute,  a  self-discrepancy.  For  con- 
sider, the  qualities  A  and  B  are  to  be  different  from 
each  other  ;  and,  if  so,  that  difference  must  fall  some- 
where. If  it  falls,  in  any  degree  or  to  any  extent, 
outside  A  or  B,  we  have  relation  at  once..<  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  how  can  difference  and  otherness 
fall  inside  ?  If  we  have  in  A  any  such  otherness, 
then  inside  A  we  must  distinguish  its  own  quality 
and  its  otherness.  And,  if  so,  then  the  unsolved 
problem  breaks  out  inside  each  quality,  and  sepa- 
rates each  into  two  qualities  in  relation.  In  brief, 
diversity  without  relation  seems  a  word  without 
meaning.  And  it  is  no  answer  to  urge  that  plurality 
proper  is  not  in  question  here.  I  am  convinced  of 
the  opposite,  but  by  all  means,  if  you  will,  let  us 
confine  ourselves  to  distinctness  and  difference.  I 
rest  my  argument  upon  this,  that  if  there  are  no 
differences,  there  are  no  qualities,  since  all  must  fall 
into  one.  But,  if  there  is  any  difference,  then  that 
implies  a  relation.  Without  a  relation  it  has  no 
meaning ;  it  is  a  mere  word,  and  not  a  thought ;  and 
no  one  would  take  it  for  a  thought  if  he  did  not,  in 
spite  of  his  protests,  import  relation  into  it.  And 
this  is  the  point  on  which  all  seems  to  turn,  Is  it 
possible  to  think  of  qualities  without  thinking  ol 
distinct  characters  ?  Is  it  possible  to  think  of  these 
without  some  relation  between  them,  either  explicit, 
or  else  unconsciously  supplied  by  the  mind  that 
tries  only  to  apprehend  ?     Have  qualities  without 


30 


APPEARANCE. 


relation  any  meaning  for  thought  ?     For  myself,   I 
am  sure  that  they  have  none. 

And  I  find  a  confirmation  in  the  issue  of  the  most 
thorough  attempt  to  build  a  system  on  this  ground. 
There  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  all  the  content 
of  the  universe  becomes  something  very  like  an 
impossible  illusion.  The  Reals  are  secluded  and 
simple,  simple  beyond  belief  if  they  never  suspect 
that  they  are  not  so.  But  our  fruitful  life,  on  the 
other  hand,  seems  due  to  their  persistence  in  imagin- 
ary recovery  from  unimaginable  perversion.  And 
they  remain  guiltless  of  all  real  share  in  these  ambi- 
guous connections,  which  seem  to  make  the  world. 
They  are  above  it,  and  fixed  like  stars  in  the  firma- 
ment— if  there  only  were  a  firmament. 


/^  2,  We  have  found  that  qualities,  taken  without 
I  ~  relations,  have  no  intelligible  meaning.  Unfortun- 
I  ately,  taken  together  with  them,  they  are  equally 
\  -unintelligible.  They  cannot,  in  the  first  place,  be 
I  wholly  resolved  into  the  relations.  You  may  urge, 
indeed,  that  without  distinction  no  difference  is  left ; 
but,  for  all  that,  the  differences  will  not  disappear 
into  the  distinction.  They  must  come  to  it,  more 
or  less,  and  they  cannot  wholly  be  made  by  it.  I 
still  insist  that  for  thought  what  is  not  relative  is- 
nothing.  But  I  urge,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
nothings  cannot  be  related,  and  that  to  turn  quali- 
ties in  relation  into  mere  relations  is  impossible. 
Since  the  fact  seems  constituted  by  both,  you  may 
urge,  if  you  please,  that  cither  one  of  them  consti- 
tutes it.  But  if  you  mean  that  the  other  is  not 
wanted,  and  that  relations  can  somehow  make  the 
terms  upon  which  they  seem  to  stand,  then,  for  my 
mind,  your  meaning  is  quite  unintelligible.  So  far 
as  I  can  see,  relations  must  depend  upon  terms,  just 
as  much  as  terms  upon  relations.  And  the  partial 
failure,  now  manifest,  of  the  Dialectic  Method  seems 
connected  with  some  misapprehension  on  this  point. 


RELATION    AND   QUALITY. 


31 


Hence  the  qualities  must  be,  and  must  also  be 
related.  But  there  is  hence  a  diversity  which  falls 
inside  each  quality.  It  has  a  double  character,  as 
both  supporting  and  as  being  made  by  the  relation. 
It  may  be  taken  as  at  once  condition  and  result,  and 
the  question  is  as  to  how  it  can  combine  this  variety. 
For  it  must  combine  the  diversity,  and  yet  it  fails  to 
do  so.  A  is  both  made,  and  is  not  made,  what  it  is 
by  relation  ;  and  these  different  aspects  are  not  each 
the  other,  nor  again  is  either  A.  If  we  call  its 
diverse  aspects  a  and  «,  then  A  is  partly  each  of 
these.  As  a  it  is  the  difference  on  which  distinction 
is  based,  while  as  a  it  is  the  distinctness  that  results 
from  connection.  A  is  really  both  somehow  together 
as  A  (a — a).  But  (as  we  saw  in  Chapter  ii.)  without 
the  use  of  a  relation  it  is  impossible  to  predicate  this 
variety  o{  A.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  with  an  in- 
ternal relation  y4's  unity  disappears,  and  its  contents 
are  dissipated  in  an  endless  process  of  distinction. 
A  at  first  becomes  a  in  relation  with  u.  but  these 
terms  themselves  fall  hopelessly  asunder.  We  have 
got,  against  our  will,  not  a  mere  aspect,  but  a  new 
quality  a,  which  itself  stands  in  a  relation  ;  and 
hence  (as  we  saw  before  with  A)  its  content  must 
be  manifold.  As  going  into  the  relation  it  itself  is 
a',  and  as  resulting  from  the  relation  it  itself  is  a*. 
And  it  combines,  and  yet  cannot  combine,  these 
adjectives.  We,  in  brief,  are  led  by  a  principle  of 
fission  which  conducts  us  to  no  end.  Every  quality 
in  relation  has,  in  consequence,  a  diversity  within 
its  own  nature,  and  this  diversity  cannot  immedi- 
ately be  asserted  of  the  quality.  Hence  the  quality 
must  e.xchange  its  unity  for  an  internal  relation. 
But,  thus  set  free,  the  diverse  aspects,  because  each 
something  in  relation,  must  each  be  something  also 
beyond.  This  diversity  is  fatal  to  the  internal  unity 
of  each  ;  and  it  demands  a  new  relation,  and  so 
on  without  limit.  In  short,  qualities  in  a  relation 
have  turned  out  as  unintelligible  as  were  qualities 


32 


APPEARANCE. 


without  one.  The  problem  from  both  sides  has 
baffled  us. 

3.  We  may  briefly  reach  the  same  dilemma  from 
the  side  of  relations.  They  are  nothing  intelligible, 
either  with  or  without  their  qualities.  In  the  first 
place,  a  relation  without  terms  seems  mere  verbiage; 
and  terms  appear,  therefore,  to  be  something  beyond 
their  relation.  At  least,  for  myself,  a  relation  which 
somehow  precipitates  terms  which  were  not  there 
before,  or  a  relation  which  can  get  on  somehow 
without  terms,  and  with  no  differences  beyond  the 
mere  ends  of  a  line  of  connection,  is  really  a  plirase 
without  meaning.  It  is,  to  my  mind,  a  false  abstrac- 
tion, and  a  thing  which  loudly  contradicts  itself ; 
and  I  fear  that  1  am  obliged  to  leave  the  matter  so. 
As  I  am  left  without  information,  and  can  discover 
with  my  own  ears  no  trace  of  harmony,  I  am  forced 
to  conclude  to  a  partial  deafness  in  others.  And 
hence  a  relation,  we  must  say,  without  qualities  is 
nothing. 

But  how  the  relation  can  stand  to  the  qualities  is, 
on  the  other  side,  unintelligible.  If  it  is  nothing  to 
the  qualities,  then  they  are  not  related  at  all  ;  and, 
if  so,  as  we  saw,  they  have  ceased  to  be  qualities, 
and  their  relation  is  a  nonentity.  But  if  it  is  to  be 
something  to  them,  then  clearly  we  now  shall  require 
a  neiv  connecting  relation.  For  the  relation  hardly 
can  be  the  mere  adjective  of  one  or  both  of  its 
terms;  or,  at  least,  as  such  it  seems  indefensible.' 
And,  being  something  itself,  if  it  does  not  itself  bear 
a  relation  to  the  terms,  in  what  intelligible  way  will 
it  succeed  in  being  anything  to  them  .''     But  here 

•  The  relation  is  not  the  adjective  of  one  term,  for,  if  so,  it 
does  not  relate.  Nor  for  the  same  reason  is  it  the  adjective  of 
each  term  taken  apart,  for  then  again  there  is  no  relation  between 
them.  Nor  is  the  relation  their  common  property,  for  then  what 
keeps  them  apart  ?  They  are  now  not  two  terms  at  all,  because 
not  separate.  And  within  this  new  whole,  in  any  case,  the  pro- 
blem of  inherence  would  break  out  in  an  aggravated  form.  But 
it  seems  unnecessary  to  work  this  all  out  in  detail. 


Rr.LATION    AND    QUALITY. 


33 


again  we  are  hurried  ofif  into  the  eddy  of  a  hopeless 
process,  since  we  are  forced  to  go  on  finding  new 
relations  without  end.  The  links  are  united  by  a 
link,  and  this  bond  of  union  is  a  link  which  also  has 
two  ends ;  and  these  require  each  a  fresh  link  to 
connect  them  with  the  old.  The  problem  is  to  find 
how  the  relation  can  stand  to  its  qualities ;  and  this 
problem  is  insoluble.  If  you  take  the  connection  as 
a  solid  thing,  you  have  got  to  show,  and  you  can- 
not show,  how  the  other  solids  are  joined  to  it. 
And,  if  you  take  it  as  a  kind  of  medium  or  unsub- 
stantial atmosphere,  it  is  a  connection  no  longer. 
You  find,  in  this  case,  that  the  whole  question  of 
the  relation  of  the  qualities  (for  they  certainly  in 
some  way  are  related)  arises  now  outside  it,  in 
precisely  the  same  form  as  before.  The  original 
relation,  in  short,  has  become  a  nonentity,  but,  in 
becoming  this,  it  has  removed  no  element  of  the 
problem. 

I  will  bring  this  chapter  to  an  end.  It  would  be 
easy,  and  yet  profitless,  to  spin  out  its  argument 
with  ramifications  and  refinements.  And  for  me 
to  attempt  to  anticipate  the  reader's  objections  would 
probably  be  useless.  I  have  stated  the  case,  and  1 
must  leave  it.  The  conclusion  to  which  I  am 
brought  is  that  a  relational  way  of  thought — any  one 
that  moves  by  the  machinery  of  terms  and  relations — 
must  give  appearance,  and  not  truth.  It  is  a  make- 
shift, a  device,  a  mere  practical  compromise,  most 
necessary,  but  in  the  end  most  indefensible.  We 
have  to  take  reality  as  many,  and  to  take  it  as  one, 
and  to  avoid  contradiction.  We  want  to  divide  it, 
or  to  take  it,  when  we  please,  as  indivisible  ;  to  go 
as  far  as  we  desire  in  either  of  these  directions,  and 
to  stop  when  that  suits  us.  And  we  succeed,  but 
succeed  merely  by  shutting  the  eye,  which  if  left 
open  would  condemn  us ;  or  by  a  perpetual  oscilla- 
tion and  a  shifting  of  the  ground,  so  as  to  turn  our 
back  upon   the  aspect  we  desire  to  ignore.      But 

A.  R.  D 


34  APPEARANCE. 

when  these  inconsistencies  are  forced  together,  as 
in  metaphysics  they  must  be,  the  result  is  an  open 
and  staring  discrepancy.  And  we  cannot  attribute 
this  to  reality ;  while,  if  we  try  to  take  it  on  our- 
selves, we  have  changed  one  evil  for  two.  Our 
intellect,  then,  has  been  condemned  to  confusion 
and  bankruptcy,  and  the  reality  has  been  left  outside 
uncomprehended.  Or  rather,  what  is  worse,  it  has 
been  stripped  bare  of  all  distinction  and  quality. 
It  is  left  naked  and  without  a  character,  and  we  are 
covered  with  confusion. 

The  reader,  who  has  followed  and  has  grasped 
the  principle  of  this  chapter,  will  have  little  need  to 
spend  his  time  upon  those  which  succeed  it  He 
will  have  seen  that  our  experience,  where  relational, 
is  not  true ;  and  he  -will  have  condemned,  almost 
without  a  hearing,  the  great  mass  of  phenomena.  I 
feel,  however,  called  on  next  to  deal  very  briefly 
with  Space  and  Time. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


SPACE    AND     TIME. 


Thk  object  of  this  chapter  is  far  from  being  an 
attempt  to  discuss  fully  the  nature  of  space  or  of 
time.  It  will  content  itself  with  stating  our  main 
justification  for  regarding  them  as  appearance.  It 
will  explain  why  we  deny  that,  in  the  character 
which  they  exhibit,  they  either  have  or  belong  to 
reality,      I  will  first  show  this  of  space. 

We  have  nothing  to  do  here  with  the  psychologi- 
cal origin  of  the  perception.  Space  may  be  a  pro- 
duct developed  from  non-spatial  elements ;  and,  if 
so,  its  production  may  have  great  bearing  on  the 
question  of  its  true  reality.  But  it  is  impossible 
for  us  to  consider  this  here.  For,  in  the  first  place, 
every  attempt  so  to  explain  its  origin  has  turned  out 
a  clear  failure.'  And,  in  the  second  place,  its  reality 
would  not  be  necessarily  affected  by  the  proof  of 
its  development.  Nothing  can  be  taken  as  real 
because,  for  psychology,  it  is  original  ;  or,  again,  as 
unreal,  because  it  is  secondary.     If  it  were  a  legiti- 

'  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  I  consider  it  to  be  original.  On 
the  contrary,  one  may  have  reason  to  believe  something  to  be 
secondary,  even  though  one  cannot  point  out  its  foundation  and 
origin.  \Vhat  has  been  called  "  extensity  "  appears  to  me  in  the 
main  to  consist  in  confusion.  When  you  know  what  you  mean 
by  it,  it  seems  to  turn  out  to  be  either  spatial  at  once  and  down- 
right, or  else  not  spatial  at  all.  It  is  useful,  in  short,  only  as  long 
as  you  allow  it  to  be  obscure.  Does  all  perception,  of  more  ami 
less  (or  all  which  does  not  involve  degree  in  the  strict  sense > 
imply  space,  or  not?  Any  answer  to  this  question  would,  I  think, 
dispose  of "  extensity." 

3S 


36 


APPEARANCE. 


mate  construction  from  elements  that  were  true,  then 
it  might  be  derived  only  for  our  knowledge,  and  be 
original  in  fact.  But  so  long  as  its  attempted  deri- 
vation is  in  part  obscure  and  in  part  illusory,  it  is 
better  to  regard  this  whole  question  as  irrelevant. 

Let  us  then,  taking  space  or  extension  simply  as 
it  is,  enquire  whether  it  contradicts  itself.  The 
reader  will  be  acquainted  with  the  difficulties  that 
-have  arisen  from  the  continuity  and  the  discrete- 
ness of  space.  These  necessitate  the  conclusion 
that  space  is  endless,  while  an  end  is  essential  to  its 
being.  Space  cannot  come  to  a  final  limit,  either 
within  itself  or  on  the  outside.  And  yet,  so  long  as 
it  remains  something  always  passing  away,  internally 
or  beyond  itself  it  is  not  space  at  all.  This  dilemma 
has  been  met  often  by  the  ignoring  of  one  aspect, 
but  it  has  never  been,  and  it  will  never  be,  con- 
fronted and  resolved.  And  naturally,  while  it 
stands,  it  is  the  condemnation  of  space. 

I  am  going  to  state  it  here  in  the  form  which 
exhibits,  I  think,  most  plainly  the  root  of  the  con- 
tradiction, and  also  its  insolubility.  Space  is  a 
relation — which  it  cannot  be  ;  and  it  is  a  quality  or 
substance  —  which  again  it  cannot  be.  It  is  a 
peculiar  form  of  the  problem  which  we  discussed  in 
the  last  chapter,  and  is  a  special  attempt  to  combine 
the  irreconcilable.  I  will  set  out  this  puzzle 
antithetically. 

I.  Space  is  not  a  mere  relation.  For  any  space 
must  consist  of  extended  parts,  and  these  parts 
clearly  are  spaces.  So  that,  even  if  we  could  take 
our  space  as  a  collection,  it  would  be  a  collection  of 
solids.  The  relation  would  join  spaces  which  would 
not  be  mere  relations.  And  hence  the  collection, 
if  taken  as  a  mere  inter-relation,  would  not  be  space. 
We  should  be  brought  to  the  proposition  that  space 
is  nothing  but  a  relation  of  spaces.  And  this  pro- 
position contradicts  itself 

Again,  from  the  other  side,  if  any  space  is  taken 


SPACE    AND    TIME. 


37 


as  a  whole,  it  is  evidently  more  than  a  relation.  It 
is  a  thing,  or  substance,  or  quality  (call  it  what  you 
please),  which  is  clearly  as  solid  as  the  parts  which 
it  unites.  From  without,  or  from  within,  it  is  quite 
as  repulsive  and  as  simple  as  any  of  its  contents. 
The  mere  fact  that  we  are  driven  always  to  speak 
of  its  parts  should  be  evidence  enough.  What  - 
could  be  the  parts  of  a  relation  .''  ' 

2.  But  space  is  nothing  but  a  relation.  F"or,  in 
the  first  place,  any  space  must  consist  of  parts  ;  and, 
if  the  parts  are  not  spaces,  the  whole  is  not  space. 
Take  then  in  a  space  any  parts.  These,  it  is 
assumed,  must  be  solid,  but  they  are  obviously 
extended.  If  extended,  however,  they  will  them- 
selves consist  of  parts,  and  these  again  of  further 
parts,  and  so  on  without  end.  A  space,  or  a  part 
of  space,  that  really  means  to  be  solid,  is  a  self- 
contradiction.  Anything  extended  is  a  collection,  a 
relation  of  extendeds,  which  again  are  relations 
of  extendeds,  and  so  on  indefinitely.  The  terms 
are  essential  to  the  relation,  and  the  terms  do  not 
exist.  Searching  without  end,  we  never  find  any- 
thing more  than  relations  ;  and  we  see  that  we  can- 
not. Space  is  essentially  a  relation  of  what  vanishes 
into  relations,  which  seek  in  vain  for  their 
terms.  It  Is  lengths  of  lengths  of — nothing  that  we 
can  find. 

And,  from  the  outside  again,  a  like  conclusion  is 
forced  on  us.  We  have  seen  that  space  vanishes 
internally  into  relations  between  units  which  never 
can  exist.  But,  on  the  other  side,  when  taken  it- 
self as  an  unit,  it  passes  away  into  the  search  for  an  - 
illusory  whole.  It  is  essentially  the  reference  of 
itself  to  something  else,  a  process  of  endless  passing 
beyond  actuality.  As  a  whole  it  is,  briefly,  the  - 
relation  of  itself  to  a  non-existent  other.  For  take 
space  as  large  and  as  complete  as  you  possibly  can. 
Still,  if  it  has  not  definite  boundaries,  it  is  not 
space  ;  and  to  make  it  end  in  a  cloud,  or  in  nothing, 


38 


APPEARANCE. 


is  mere  blindness  and  our  mere  failure  to  perceive. 
A  space  limited,  and  yet  without  space  that  is  out- 
side, is  a  self-contradiction.  But  the  outside,  un- 
fortunately, is  compelled  likewise  to  pass  beyond 
itself;  and  the  end  cannot  be  reached.  And  it  is 
not  merely  that  we  fail  to  perceive,  or  fail  to  under- 
stand, how  this  can  be  otherwise.  We  perceive 
and  we  understand  that  it  cannot  be  otherwise,  at 
least  if  space  is  to  be  space.  We  either  do  not  know 
what  space  means  ;  and,  if  so,  certainly  we  cannot 
say  that  it  is  more  than  appearance.  Or  else,  know- 
ing what  we  mean  by  it,  we  see  inherent  in  that 
meaning  the  puzzle  we  are  describing.  Space,  to 
be  space,  must  have  space  outside  itself  It  for 
ever  disappears  into  a  whole,  which  proves  never 
to  be  more  than  one  side  of  a  relation  to  something 
beyond.  And  thus  space  has  neither  any  solid 
parts,  nor,  when  taken  as  one,  is  it  more  than  the 
relation  of  itself  to  a  new  self  As  it  stands,  it  is 
not  space  ;  and,  in  trying  to  find  space  beyond  it, 
we  can  find  only  that  which  passes  away  into  a 
relation.  Space  is  a  relation  between  terms,  which 
can  never  be  found. 

It  would  not  repay  us  to  dwell  further  on  the 
contradiction  which  we  have  exhibited.  The  reader, 
who  has  once  grasped  the  principle,  can  deal  him- 
self with  the  details,  I  will  refer  merely  in  passing 
to  a  supplementary  difificulty.  Empty  space — space 
without  some  quality  (visual  or  muscular)  which  in  it- 
self is  more  than  spatial — is  an  unreal  abstraction.  It 
cannot  be  said  to  exist,  for  the  reason  that  it  cannot 
by  itself  have  any  meaning.  When  a  man  realizes 
what  he  has  got  in  it,  he  finds  that  always  he  has  a 
quality  which  is  more  than  extension  (cp.  Chapter 
j.).  But,  if  so,  how  this  quality  is  to  stand  to  the 
extension  is  an  insoluble  problem.  It  is  a  case  of 
"  inherence,"  which  we  saw  (Chapter  ii.)  was  in 
principle  unintelligible.  And,  without  further  delay, 
I   will  proceed  to    consider  time.      I  shall  in  this 


« 


SPACE    AND    TIME. 


39 


chapter  confine  myself  almost  entirely  to  the  diffi- 
culties caused  by  the  discretion  and  the  continuity 
of  time.  With  regard  to  change,  I  will  say  some- 
thing further  in  the  chapter  which  follows. 

Efforts  have  been  made  to  explain  time  psycho- 
logically—  to  exhibit,  that  is  to  say,  its  origin  from  • 
what  comes  to  the  mind  as  timeless.  But,  for  the 
same  reason  which  seemed  conclusive  in  the  case  of 
space,  and  which  here  has  even  greater  weight,  I 
shall  not  consider  these  attempts.  I  shall  inquire 
simply  as  to  time's  character,  and  whether,  that 
being  as  it  is,  it  can  belong  to  reality. 

It  is  usual  to  consider  time  under  a  spatial  form. 
It  is  taken  as  a  stream,  and   past  and  future  are  re-  - 
garded  as  parts  of  it,  which   presumably  do  not  co- 
exist, but  are  often  talked  of  as  if  they  did.      Time, 
apprehended  in  this  way,  is  open  to  the  objection 
we  have  just  urged  against  space.      It  is  a  relation 
— and,  on  the  other  side,  it  is  not  a  relation  ;  and  it 
is,  again,  incapable  of  being  anything  beyond  a  re- 
lation.     And    the    reader,    who     has    followed    the 
dilemma  which  was  fatal  to  space,  will  not  require 
much  explanation.     If  you  take  time  as  a  relation 
between  units  without  duration,  then  the  whole  time 
has  no  duration,    and  is   not  time  at  all.     But,   if 
you  give  duration   to  the  whole  time,  then  at  once 
the  units  themselves  are  found   to  possess  it ;  and 
they  thus  cease  to  be  units.     Time  in  fact  is  "  be- 
fore "  and  "  after ''  in  one  ;  and  without  this  diversity 
it  is   not   time.     But    these   differences   cannot   be 
asserted  of  the  unity  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand  and 
failing  that,   time    is  helplessly    dissolved.      Hence 
they  are  asserted  under  a  relation.     "  Before  in  re- 
lation to  after  "  is  the  character  of  time  ;  and  here 
the  old  difficulties  about  relation  and  quality  recom- 
mence.    The  relation  is  not  an   unity,  and  yet  the 
terms  are  nonentities,  if  left  apart.    Again,  to  import 
an  independent  character  into  the  terms  is  to  make 


40 


APPEARANCE. 


each  somehow  in  itself  both  before  and  after.  But 
this  brings  on  a  process  which  dissipates  the  terms 
into  relations,  which,  in  the  end,  end  in  nothing. 
And  to  make  the  relation  of  time  an  unit  is,  first  of 
all,  to  make  it  stationary,  by  destroying  within  it  the 
diversity  of  before  and  after.  And,  in  the  second 
place,  this  solid  unit,  existing  only  by  virtue  of 
external  relations,  is  forced  to  expand.  It  perishes 
in  ceaseless  oscillation,  between  an  empty  solidity 
and  a  transition  beyond  itself  towards  illusory  com- 
pleteness. 

And,  as  with  space,  the  qualitative  content — which 
is  not  merely  temporal,  and  apart  from  which  the 
terms  related  in  time  would  have  no  character — 
presents  an  insoluble  problem.  How  to  combine 
this  in  unity  with  the  time  which  it  fills,  and  again 
how  to  establish  each  aspect  apart,  are  both  beyond 
our  resources.  And  time  so  far,  like  space,  has 
turned  out  to  be  appearance. 

But  we  shall  be  rightly  told  that  a  spatial  form  is 
not  essential  to  time,  and  that,  to  examine  it  fairly, 
we  should  not  force  our  errors  upon  it.  Let  us  then 
attempt  to  regard  time  as  it  stands,  and  without 
extraneous  additions.  We  shall  only  convince  our- 
selves that  the  root  of  the  old  dilemma  is  not  torn  up. 

If  we  are  to  keep  to  time  as  it  comes,  and  are  to 
abstain  at  first  from  inference  and  construction,  we 
must  confine  ourselves,  I  presume,  to  time  as  pre- 
sented. But  presented  time  must  be  time  present, 
and  we  must  agree,  at  least  provisionally,  not  to  go 
beyond  the  "  now."  And  the  question  at  once  be- 
fore us  will  be  as  to  the  "  now's "  temporal  con- 
tents. First,  let  us  ask  if  they  exist.  Is  the  "now" 
simple  and  indivisible  ?  We  can  at  once  reply  in 
the  negative.  For  time  implies  before  and  after, 
and  by  consequence  diversity ;  and  hence  the  simple 
is  not  time.  We  are  compelled  then,  so  far,  to  take 
the  present  as  comprehending  diverse  aspects. 

How   many  aspects  it  contains  is  an   interesting 


SPACE    ANU    TIME. 


4» 


question.  According  to  one  opinion,  in  the  "  now  " 
we  can  observe  both  past  and  future ;  and,  whether 
these  are  divided  by  the  present,  and,  if  so,  pre- 
cisely in  what  sense,  admits  of  further  doubt.  In 
another  opinion,  which  I  prefer,  the  future  is  not 
presented,  but  is  a  product  of  construction  ;  and  the 
"  now  "  contains  merely  the  process  of  present  turn- 
ing into  past.  But  here  these  diflferences,  if  indeed 
they  are  such,  are  fortunately  irrelevant.  All  that 
we  require  is  the  admission  of  some  process  within 
the  "  now." ' 

For  any  process  admitted  destroys  the  "  now  " 
from  within.  Before  and  after  are  diverse,  and  their 
incompatibility  compels  us  to  use  a  relation  between 
them.  Then  at  once  the  old  wearisome  game  is 
played  again.  The  aspects  become  parts,  the  "now" 
consists  of  "  nows,"  and  in  the  end  these  "  nows  " 
prove  undiscoverable.  For,  as  a  solid  part  of  time, 
the  "  now  "  does  not  exist.  Pieces  of  duration  may 
to  us  appear  not  to  be  composite ;  but  a  very  little 
reflection  lays  bare  their  inherent  fraudulence.  If 
they  are  not  duration,  they  do  not  contain  an  after 
and  before,  and  they  have,  by  themselves,  no  begin- 
ning or  end,  and  are  by  themselves  outside  of  time. 
But,  if  so,  time  becomes  merely  the  relation  between 
them  ;  and  duration  is  a  number  of  relations  of  the 
timeless,  themselves  also,  I  suppose,  related  some- 
how so  as  to  make  one  duration.  But  how  a  rela- 
tion is  to  be  an  unity,  of  which  these  differences  are 
predicable,  we  have  seen  is  incomprehensible.  And, 
if  it  fails  to  be  an  unity,  time  is  forthwith  dissolved. 
But  why  should  I  weary  the  reader  by  developing 
in  detail  the  impossible  consequences  of  either  alter- 
native ?  If  he  has  understood  the  principle,  he  is 
with  us  ;  and,  otherwise,  the  uncertain  argiimenlum 
ad  homitutn  would  too  certainly  pass  into  argumen- 
turn  ad  nauseam. 

'  On  tlie  different  meanings  of  the  "  present "  I  have  said  some- 
thing in  my  PrindpUi  of  Logit,  pp.  51,  foil. 


42 


APPEARANCE. 


I  will,  however,  instance  one  result  which  follows 
from  a  denial  of  time's  continuity.  Time  will  in 
this  case  fall  somehow  between  the  timeless,  as 
A — C — E.  But  the  rate  of  change  is  not  uniform 
for  all  events  ;  and,  I  presume,  no  one  will  assert 
that,  when  we  have  arrived  at  our  apparent  units, 
that  sets  a  limit  to  actual  and  possible  velocity.  Let 
us  suppose  then  a,nother  series  of  events,  which, 
taken  as  a  whole,  coincides  in  time  with  A — C — E, 
but  contains  the  si.x  units  a — b — c — d — e^f.  Either 
then  these  other  relations  (those,  for  example,  be- 
tween a  and  b,  c  and  d)  will  fail  between  A  and  C, 
C  and  E,  and  what  that  can  mean  I  do  not  know  ; 
or  else  the  transition  a — b  will  coincide  with  A, 
which  is  timeless  and  contains  no  possible  lapse. 
And  that,  so  far  as  I  can  perceive,  contradicts  itself 
outright.  But  I  feel  inclined  to  add  that  this  whole 
question  is  less  a  matter  for  detailed  argument  than 
for  understanding  in  its  principle.  I  doubt  if  there 
is  any  one  who  has  ever  grasped  this,  and  then  has 
failed  to  reach  one  main  result.  But  there  are  too 
many  respectable  writers  whom  here  one  can  hardly 
criticise.  They  have  simply  never  got  to  under- 
stand. 

Thus,  if  in  the  time,  which  we  call  presented, 
there  exists  any  lapse,  that  time  is  torn  by  a  dilem- 
ma, and  is  condemned  to  be  appearance.  But,  if 
the  presented  is  timeless,  another  destruction  awaits 
us.  Time  will  be  the  relation  of  the  present  to  a 
future  and  past ;  and  the  relation,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  not  compatible  with  diversity  or  unity.  Further, 
the  existence,  not  presented,  of  future  and  of  past 
seems  ambiguous.  But,  apart  from  that,  time 
perishes  in  the  endless  process  beyond  itself.  The 
unit  will  be  for  ever  its  own  relation  to  somethino; 
beyond,  something  in  the  end  not  discoverable.  And 
this  process  is  forced  on  it,  both  by  its  temporal 
form,  and  again  by  the  continuity  of  its  content, 
which  transcends  what  is  given. 


I 


SPACE   AND   TIME.  43 

Time,  like  space,  has  most  evidently  proved  not 
to  be  real,  but  to  be  a  contradictory  appearance.  I 
will,  in  the  next  chapter,  reinforce  and  repeat  this 
conclusion  by  some  remarks  upon  change. 


CHAPTER  V. 


MOTION  AND  CHANGE  AND  ITS  PERCEPTION. 


I  AM  sensible  that  this  chapter  will  repeat  much  of 
the  former  discussion.  It  is  not  for  my  own  pleasure 
that  I  write  it,  but  as  an  attempt  to  strengthen  the 
reader.  Whoever  is  convinced  that  change  is  a 
self-contradictory  appearance,  will  do  well  perhaps 
to  pass  on  towards  something  which  interests  him. 

Motion  has  from  an  early  time  been  criticised 
severely,  and  it  has  never  been  defended  with  much 
success.  I  will  briefly  point  to  the  principle  on  which 
these  criticisms  are  founded.  Motion  implies  that 
what  is  moved  is  in  two  places  in  one  time  ;  and  this 
seems  not  possible.  That  motion  implies  two  places 
is  obvious  ;  that  these  places  are  successive  is  no  less 
obvious.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  clear  that  the 
process  must  have  unity.  The  thing  moved  must 
be  one  ;  and,  again,  the  time  must  be  one.  If  the 
time  were  only  many  times,  out  of  relation,  and  not 
parts  of  a  single  temporal  whole,  then  no  motion 
would  be  found.  But  if  the  time  is  one,  then,  as  we 
have  seen,  it  cannot  also  be  many. 

A  common  "  explanation  "  is  to  divide  both  the 
space  and  the  time  into  discrete  corresponding 
units,  taken  literally  ad  libitum.  The  lapse  in  this 
case  is  supposed  to  fall  somehow  between  them. 
But,  as  a  theoretical  solution,  the  device  is  childish. 
Greater  velocity  would  in  this  case  be  quite  im- 
possible ;  and  a  lapse,  falling  between  timeless  units, 
has  really,  as  we  have  seen,  no  meaning.  And 
where  the  unity  of  these  lapses,  which  makes   the 


MOTION    AND    CHANGE    AND    ITS    PERCEPTION.       45 


of  course,  are 
And  how  this 
identity  of  the 
What  becomes 


one  duration,  is  to  be  situated,  we, 
not,  and  could  not  be.  informed. 
inconsistent  mass  is  related  to  the 
body  moved  is  again  unintelligible. 
clear  is  merely  this,  that  motion  in  space  gives  no 
solution  of  our  former  difficulties.  It  adds,  in 
space,  a  further  detail  which  throws  no  light  on  the 
principle.  But,  on  the  other  side,  it  makes  the  dis- 
crepancies of  change  more  palpable  ;  and  it  forces 
on  all  but  the  thoughtless  the  problem  of  the  identity 
of  a  thing  which  has  changed.  But  change  in  time, 
with  all  its  inconsistencies,  lies  below  motion  in 
space;  and,  if  this  cannot  be  defended,  motion  at 
once  is  condemned. 

The  problem  of  change  underlies  that  of  motion, 
but  the  former  itself  is  not  fundamental.  It  points 
back  to  the  dilemma  of  the  one  and  the  many,  the 
differences  and  the  identity,  the  adjectives  and  the 
thing,  the  qualities  and  the  relations.  How  any- 
thing can  possibly  be  anything  else  was  a  question 
which  defied  our  efforts.  Change  is  little  beyond 
an  instance  of  this  dilemma  in  principle.  It  either 
adds  an  irrelevant  complication,  or  confuses  itself  in 
a  blind  attempt  at  compromise.  Let  us,  at  the  cost 
of  repetition,  try  to  get  clear  on  this  head. 

Change,  it  is  evident,  must  be  change  of  some- 
thing, and  it  is  obvious,  further,  that  it  contains 
diversity.  Hence  it  asserts  two  of  one,  and  so  falls 
at  once  under  the  condemnation  of  our  previous 
chapters.  But  it  tries  to  defend  itself  by  this  dis- 
tinction :  "Yes,  both  are  asserted,  but  not  both  in 
one  ;  there  is  a  relation,  and  so  the  unity  and  plur- 
ality are  combined."  But  our  criticism  of  relations 
has  destroyed  this  subterfuge  beforehand.  We 
have  seen  that,  when  a  whole  has  been  thus  broken 
up  into  relations  and  terms,  it  has  become  utterly 
self-discrepant.  You  can  truly  predicate  neither 
one  part  of  the  other  part,  nor  any,  nor  all,  of  the 
whole.     And,  in   its  attempt  to  contain   these  ele- 


46 


APPEARANCE. 


ments,  the  whole  commits  suicide,  and  destroys 
them  in  its  death.  It  would  serve  no  purpose  to 
repeat  these  inexorable  laws.  Let  us  see  merely  how 
change  condemns  itself  by  entering  their  sphere. 

Something,  A,  changes,  and  therefore  it  cannot 
be  permanent.  On  the  other  hand,  if  A  is  not 
permanent,  what  is  it  that  changes.'  It  will  no 
longer  be  A,  but  something  else.  In  other  words, 
let  A  be  free  from  change  in  time,  and  it  does  not 
change.  But  let  it  contain  change,  and  at  once  it 
becomes  A',  A',  A^.  Then  what  becomes  of  A, 
and  of  its  change,  for  we  are  left  with  something 
else  ?  Again,  we  may  put  the  problem  thus.  The 
diverse  states  of  A  must  exist  within  one  time  ;  and 
yet  they  cannot,  because  they  are  successive. 

Let  us  first  take  A  as  timeless,  in  the  sense  of 
out  of  time.  Here  the  succession  of  the  change 
must  belong  to  it,  or  not.  In  the  former  case,  what 
is  the  relation  between  the  succession  and  A  ?  If 
there  is  none,  A  does  not  change.  If  there  is  any, 
it  forces  unintelligibly  a  diversity  on  to  A,  which  is 
foreign  to  its  nature  and  incomprehensible.  And 
then  this  diversity,  by  itself,  will  be  merely  the 
unsolved  problem.  If  we  are  not  to  remove  change 
altogether,  then  we  have,  standing  in  unintelligible 
relation  with  the  timeless  A,  a  temporal  change 
which  offers  us  all  our  old  difficulties  unreduced. 

A  must  be  taken  as  falling  within  the  time-series  ; 
and,  if  so,  the  question  will  be  whether  it  has  or 
has  not  got  duration.  Either  alternative  is  fatal. 
If  the  one  time,  necessary  for  change,  means  a 
single  duration,  that  is  self-contradictory,  for  no 
duration  is  single.  The  would-be  unit  falls  asunder 
into  endless  plurality,  in  which  it  disappears.  The 
pieces  of  duration,  each  containing  a  before  and  an 
after,  are  divided  against  themselves,  and  become 
mere  relations  of  the  illusory.  And  the  attempt  to 
locate  the  lapse  within  relations  of  the  discrete  leads 
to  hopeless  absurdities.     Nor,  in  any  case,  could  we 


MOTION    AND    CHANGE    AND    ITS    PERCEPTION. 


47 


unite  intelligibly  the  plurality  of  these  relations  so 
as  to  make  one  duration.  In  short,  therefore,  if  the 
one  time  required  for  change  means  one  duration, 
that  is  not  one,  and  there  is  no  change. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  the  change  actually  took 
place  merely  in  om  time,  then  it  could  be  no  change 
at  all.  A  is  to  have  a  plurality  in  succession,  and  yet 
simultaneously.  This  is  surely  a  Hat  contradiction. 
If  there  is  no  duration,  and  the  time  is  simple,  it  is 
not  time  at  all.  And  to  speak  of  diversity,  and  of  a 
succession  of  before  and  after,  in  this  abstract  point, 
is  not  possible  when  we  think.  Indeed,  the  best 
excuse  for  such  a  statement  would  be  the  plea  that 
it  is  meaningless.  But,  if  so,  change,  upon  any 
hypothesis,  is  impossible.  It  can  be  no  more  than 
appearance. 

And  we  may  perceive  its  main  character.  It 
contains  both  the  necessity  and  the  impossibility  of 
uniting  diverse  aspects.  These  differences  have 
broken  out  in  the  whole  which  at  first  was  im- 
mediate. But,  if  they  entirely  break  out  of  it,  they 
are  dissipated  and  destroyed ;  and  yet,  by  their 
presence  within  the  whole,  that  already  is  broken, 
and  they  scattered  into  nothings.  The  relational 
form  in  general,  and  here  in  particular  this  form  of 
time,  is  a  natural  way  of  compromise.  It  is  no  solu- 
tion of  the  discrepancies,  and  we  might  call  it  rather 
a  method  of  holding  them  in  suspension.  It  is  an 
artifice  by  which  we  become  blind  on  either  side,  to 
suit  the  occasion  ;  and  the  whole  secret  consists  in 
ignoring  that  aspect  which  we  are  unable  to  use. 
Thus  it  is  required  that  A  should  change  ;  and,  for 
this,  two  characters,  not  compatible,  must  be  present 
at  once.  There  must  be  a  successive  diversity,  and 
yet  the  time  must  be  one.  The  succession,  in  other 
words,  is  not  really  successive  unless  it  is  present. 
And  our  compromise  consists  in  regarding  the  pro- 
cess mainly  from  whichever  of  its  aspects  answers 
to  our  need,  and  in  ignoring — that  is,  in  failing  or  in 


48 


APPEARANCE. 


refusing  to  perceive — the  hostility  of  the  other  side. 
If  you  want  to  take  a  piece  of  duration  as  present 
and  as  one,  you  shut  your  eyes,  or  in  some  way  are 
blind  to  the  discretion,  and,  attending  merely  to  the 
content,  take  that  as  an  unity.  And,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  as  easy  to  forget  every  aspect  but  that  of 
discreteness.  But  change,  as  a  whole,  consists  in 
.  the  union  of  these  two  aspects.  It  is  the  holding 
both  at  once,  while  laying  stress  upon  the  one  which 
for  the  time  is  prominent,  and  while  the  difficulties 
are  kept  out  of  sight  by  rapid  shuffling.  Thus,  in 
asserting  that  A  alters,  we  mean  that  the  one  thing 
is  different  at  different  times.  We  bring  this  di- 
versity into  relation  with  A'%  qualitative  identity, 
and  all  seems  harmonious.  Of  course,  as  we  know, 
even  so  far,  there  is  a  mass  of  inconsistency,  but 
that  is  not  the  main  point  here.  The  main  point  is 
that,  so  far,  we  have  not  reached  a  change  of  A. 
The  identity  of  a  content  A,  in  iome  sort  ^relation 
with  diverse  moments  and  with  varying  states — if  it 
means  anything  at  all — is  still  not  what  we  under- 
stand by  change.  That  the  mere  oneness  of  a 
quality  can  be  the  unity  of  a  duration  will  hardly 
be  contended.  For  change  to  exist  at  all,  this  one- 
ness must  be  in  temporal  relation  with  the  diversity. 
In  other  words,  if  the  process  itself  is  not  one  state, 
the  moments  are  not  parts  of  it ;  and,  if  so,  they 
cannot  be  related  in  time  to  one  another.  On  the 
one  hand,  A  remains  A  through  a  period  of  any 
length,  and  is  not  chantjed  so  far  as  A.  Considered 
thus,  we  may  say  that  its  duration  is  mere  presence 
and  contains  no  lapse.  But  the  same  duration,  if 
regarded  as  the  succession  oi A's  altered  states,  con- 
sists of  many  pieces.  On  the  other  hand,  thirdly, 
this  whole  succession,  regarded  as  one  sequence  or 
period,  becomes  an  unity,  and  is  again  present. 
"  Through  the  present  period,"  we  should  boldly 
say,  "  y4's  processes  have  been  regular.  His  rate 
of  growth   is  normal,  and   his  condition  is  for  the 


MOTION   AND   CHANGE  >ND   ITS    PERCEPTIOV.       49 

present  identical.  But,  during  the  lapse  of  this 
one  period,  there  have  been  present  countless 
successive  differences  in  the  state  of  B  ;  and  the 
coincidence  in  time,  of  ^'s  unchanging  excitement 
with  the  healthy  succession  of  A''i  changes, 
shows  tliat  in  the  same  interval  we  may  have 
present  either  motion  or  rest."  There  is  hardly 
e.xaggeration  here ;  but  the  statement  exhibits  a 
palpable  oscillation.  We  have  the  dwelling,  with 
emphasis  and  without  principle,  upon  separate 
aspects,  and  the  whole  idea  consists  essentially 
in  this  oscillation.  There  is  total  failure  to  unite 
the  differences  by  any  consistent  principle,  and  the 
one  discoverable  system  is  the  systematic  avoidance 
of  consistency.  The  single  fact  is  viewed  alternately 
from  either  side,  but  the  sides  are  not  combined  into 
an  intelligible  whole.  And  I  trust  the  reader  may 
agree  that  their  consistent  union  is  impossible.  The 
problem  of  change  defies  solution,  so  long  as  change 
is  not  degraded  to  the  rank  of  mere  appearance. 

I  will  end  this  chapter  by  some  remarks  on  the 
perception  of  succession,  or,  rather,  one  of  its  main 
features.  And  I  will  touch  upon  this  merely  in  the 
interest  of  metaphysics,  reserving  what  psychological 
opinions  I  may  have  formed  for  another  occasion. 
The  best  psychologists,  so  far  as  I  know,  are  be- 
coming agreed  that  for  this  perception  some  kind  of 
unity  is  wanted.  They  see  that  without  an  identity. 
to  which  all  its  members  are  related,  a  series  is  not 
one,  and  is  therefore  not  a  series.  In  fact,  the 
person,  who  denies  this  unity,  is  able  to  do  so  merely 
because  he  covertly  supplies  it  from  his  own  un- 
rellecting  mind.  And  I  shall  venture  to  regard  this 
general  doctrine  as  established,  and  shall  pass  to 
the  point  where  I  think  metaphysics  is  further  in- 
terested. 

It  being  assumed  that  succession,  or  rather,  here, 
perceived  succession,  is  relative  to  an  unity,  a  ques- 

A.  R.  E 


tion  arises  as  to  the  nature  of  this  unity,  generally 
and  in  each  case.  The  question  is  both  difficult 
and  interesting  psychologically  ;  but  I  must  confine 
myself  to  the  brief  remarks  which  seem  called  for  in 
this  place.  It  is  not  uncommon  to  meet  the  view 
that  the  unity  is  timeless,  or  that  it  has  at  any  rate 
no  duration.  On  the  other  hand,  presumably,  it 
has  a  date,  if  not  a  place,  in  the  general  series  of 
phenomena,  and  is,  in  this  sense,  an  event.  The 
succession  I  understand  to  be  apprehended  some- 
how in  an  indivisible  moment, — that  is,  without  any 
lapse  of  time, — and  to  be  so  far  literally  simultaneous. 
Any  such  doctrine  seems  to  me  open  to  fatal  ob- 
jections, some  of  which  1  will  state. 

1.  The  first  objection  holds  good  only  against 
certain  persons.  If  the  timeless  act  contains  a  re- 
lation, and  if  the  latter  must  be  relative  to  a  real 
unity,  the  problem  of  succession  appears  again  to 
break  out  without  limit  inside  this  timeless  unit. 

2.  But  those,  who  would  deny  the  premises  of 
this  first  objection,  may  be  invited  to  explain  them- 
selves on  other  points.  The  act  has  no  duration, 
and  yet  it  is  a  psychical  event.  It  has,  that  is,  an 
assignable  place  in  history.  If  it  does  not  possess 
the  latter,  how  is  it  related  to  my  perception  ?  But, 
if  it  is  an  event  with  a  before  and  an  after  in  time, 
how  can  it  have  no  duration.''  It  occurs  in  time, 
and  yet  it  occupies  no  time ;  or  it  does  not  occur  in 
lime,  though  it  happens  at  a  given  date.  This  does 
not  look  like  the  account  of  anything  real,  but  it  is 
a  manufactured  abstraction,  like  length  without 
breadth.  And  if  it  is  a  mere  way  of  stating  the 
problem  in  hand — viz.,  that  from  one  point  of  view 
succession  has  no  duration — it  seems  a  bad  way 
of  stating  it.  But  if  it  means  more,  its  meaning 
seems  quite  unintelligible. 

3.  And  it  is  the  more  plainly  so  since  its  content 
is  certainly  successive,  as  possessing  the  distinction 
gf  after  and  before.     This  distinction  is  a  fact ;  and, 


MOTION    AND    CHANGE   AND    ITS    PERCEPTION. 


Sr 


if  so,  the  psychical  lapse  is  a  fact ;  and,  if  so,  this 
fact  is  left  in  flat  contradiction  with  the  timeless 
unity.  And  to  urge  that  the  succession,  as  used, 
is  ideal — is  merely  content,  and  is  not  psychical 
fact — would  be  a  futile  attempt  to  misapply  a 
great  principle.  It  is  not  wholly  true  that  "ideas 
are  not  what  they  mean,"  for  if  their  meanin^r  is  not 
psychical  fact.  I  should  like  to  know  how  and  where 
it  exists.  And  the  question  is  whether  succession 
can,  in  any  sense,  come  before  the  mind  without 
some  actual  succession  entering  into  the  very  ap- 
prehension. If  you  do  not  iman  a  lapse,  then  you 
have  given  up  your  contention.  But,  if  you  do 
mean  it,  then  how,  except  in  the  form  of  some 
actual  mental  transition,  is  it  to  come  ideally  before 
your  mind  ?  I  know  of  no  intelligible  answer;  and 
I  conclude  that,  in  this  perception,  what  is  perceived 
is  an  actual  succession  ;  and  hence  the  perception 
itself  must  have  some  duration. 

4.  And,  if  it  has  no  duration,  then  I  do  not  see 
how  it  is  related  to  the  before  and  after  of  the  time 
perceived ;  and  the  succession  of  this,  with  all  its 
un.solved  problems,  seems  to  me  to  fall  outside  it 
(cp.  No.  i). 

5.  And,  lastly,  if  we  may  have  one  of  these  occur- 
rences without  duration,  apparently  we  may  also 
have  many  in  succession,  all  again  without  duration. 
And  I  do  not  know  how  the  absurd  consequences 
which  follow  can  be  avoided  or  met. 


In  short,  this  creation  is  a  monster.  It  is  not  a 
working  fiction,  entertained  for  the  sake  of  its  work. 
For,  like  most  other  monsters,  it  really  is  impotent. 
It  is  both  idle  and  injurious,  since  it  has  diverted 
attention  from  the  answer  to  its  problem. 

And  that,  to  the  reader  who  has  followed  our 
metaphysical  discussion,  will,  I  think,  be  apparent. 
We  found  that  succession  required  both  diversity 
and  unity.      These  could  not  intelligibly  be  com- 


52 


APPEARANCE. 


bined,  and  their  union  was  a  mere  junction,  with 
oscillation  of  emphasis  from  one  aspect  to  the  other. 
And  so,  psychically  also,  the  timeless  unity  is  a 
piece  of  duration,  not  experienced  as  successive. 
Assuredly  everything  psychical  is  an  event,  and  it 
really  contains  a  lapse  ;  but  so  far  as  you  do  not  use, 
or  notice,  that  lapse,  it  is  not  there  for  you  and  for 
the  purpose  in  hand.  In  other  words,  there  is  a 
permanent  in  the  perception  of  change,  which  goes 
right  through  the  succession  and  holds  it  together. 
The  permanent  can  do  this,  on  the  one  hand,  be- 
cause it  occupies  duration  and  is,  in  its  essence, 
divisible  indefinitely.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  one 
and  unchanging,  so  far  as  it  is  regarded  or  felt,  and 
is  used,  from  that  aspect.  And  the  special  concrete 
identities,  which  thus  change,  and  again  do  not 
change,  are  the  key  to  the  particular  successions  that 
are  perceived.  Presence  is  not  absolute  timelessness  ; 
it  is  any  piece  of  duration,  so  far  as  that  is  con- 
sidered from  or  felt  in  an  identical  aspect.  And 
this  mere  relative  absence  of  lapse  has  been  per- 
verted into  the  absolute  timeless  monstrosity  which 
we  have  ventured  to  condemn. 

But  it  is  one  thing  to  see  how  a  certain  feature  of 
our  time-perception  is  possible.  It  is  quite  another 
thing  to  admit  that  this  feature,  as  it  stands,  gives 
the  truth  about  reality.  And  that,  as  we  have  learnt, 
is  impossible.  We  are  forced  to  assert  that  A  is 
both  continuous  and  discrete,  both  successive  and 
present.  And  our  practice  of  taking  it,  now  as  one 
in  a  certain  respect,  and  now  again  as  many  in 
another  respect,  shows  only  how  we  practise.  The 
problem  calls  upon  us  to  answer  how  these  aspects 
and  respects  are  consistently  united  in  the  one  thing, 
either  outside  of  our  minds  or  inside — that  makes 
no  difference.  And  if  we  fail,  as  we  shall,  to  bring 
these  features  together,  we  have  left  the  problem 
unsolved.  And,  if  it  is  unsolved,  then  change  and 
motion  are  incompatible  internally,  and  are  set  down 


MOTION    AND   CHANGE   AND   ITS    PERCEPTION.       53 

to  be  appearance.  And  if,  as  a  last  resource,  we 
use  the  phrases  "  potential "  and  "  actual,"  and 
attempt  by  their  aid  to  reach  harmony,  we  shall 
have  left  the  case  as  it  stands.  We  shall  mean  by 
these  phrases  that  the  thing  is,  and  yet  that  it  is 
not,  and  that  we  choose  for  our  own  purpose  to 
treat  these  irreconcilables  as  united.  But  that  is 
only  another,  though  perhaps  a  more  polite,  way  of 
saying  that  the  problem  is  insoluble. 

In  the  chapter  which  comes  next,  we  must  follow 
the  same  difhculties  a  little  further  into  other  appli- 
cations. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

CAUSATION. 

The  object  of  this  chapter  is  merely  to  point  out. 
first,  the  main  discrepancy  in  causation,  and,  in  the 
second  place,  to  exhibit  an  obstacle  coming  from 
time's  continuity.  Some  other  aspects  of  the  gene- 
ral question  will  be  considered  in  later  chapters.* 

VVe  may  regard  cause  as  an  attempt  to  account 
rationally  for  change.  A  becomes  B,  and  this  alter- 
ation is  felt  to  be  not  compatible  with  A.  Mere  A 
would  still  be  mere  A,  and,  if  it  turns  to  something 
different,  then  something  else  is  concerned.  There 
must,  in  other  words,  be  a  reason  for  the  change. 
But  the  endeavour  to  find  a  satisfactory  reason  is 
fruitless. 

We  have  seen  that  A  is  not  B,  nor,  again,  a 
relation  to  B.  "  Followed  by  B,"  "  changing  into 
A  B,"  are  not  the  same  as  A  ;  and  we  were  able  to 
discover  no  way  of  combining  these  with  A  which 
could  be  more  than  mere  appearance.  In  causation 
we  must  now  consider  a  fresh  effort  at  combination, 
and  its  essence  is  very  simple.  U  "  A  becomes  B" 
is  a  self-contradiction,  then  add  something  to  A 
which  will  divide  the  burden.  In  "  A  +  C  becomes 
B"  we  may  perhaps  find  relief.  But  this  relief, 
considered  theoretically,  is  a  mass  of  contradictions. 

It  would  be  a  thankless  task  to  work  these  out 
into  detail,  for  the  root  of  the  matter  may  be  stated 
at  once.     If  the  sequence  of  the  effect  is  different 

'  I  have  touched  on  the  Law  of  Causation  in  Chapter  xxiii. 

54 


CAUSATION. 


55 


from  the  cause,  how  is  the  ascription  of  this  differ- 
ence to  be  rationally  defended  ?  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  not  different,  then  causation  does  not 
exist,  and  its  assertion  is  a  farce.  There  is  no 
escape  from  this  fundamental  dilemma. 

We  have  in  the  cause  merely  a  fresh  instance  of 
compromise  without  principle,  another  case  of  pure 
makeshift.  And  it  soon  exhibits  its  nature.  The 
cause  was  not  mere  A  ;  that  would  be  found  too 
intolerable.  The  cause  was  A  +  C\  but  this  com- 
bination seems  meaningless.  It  is  offered  in  the 
face  of  our  result  as  to  the  nature  of  relations 
(Chapter  iii.);  and  by  that  result  it  has  already  been 
undermined  and  ruined.  But  let  us  see  how  it  pro- 
poses to  go  about  its  business.  In  "  A  +  C  followed 
by  B"  the  addition  of  C  makes  a  difference  to  A, 
or  it  makes  no  difference.  Let  us  suppose,  first,  that 
it  does  make  a  difference  to  A.  But,  if  so,  then  A 
has  already  been  altered  ;  and  hence  the  problem  of 
causation  breaks  out  within  the  very  cause.  A  and 
C  become  A  +  C,  and  the  old  puzzle  begins  about 
the  way  in  which  A  and  C  become  other  than  they 
are.  We  are  concerned  here  with  A,  but,  of  course, 
with  C  there  is  the  same  difficulty.  We  are,  there- 
fore, driven  to  correct  ourselves,  and  to  say  that, 
not  A  and  C  merely,  but  A  and  C+D  become 
A  +  C,  and  so  B.  But  here  we  perceive  at  once 
that  we  have  fallen  into  endless  regress  within  the 
cause.  If  the  cause  is  to  be  the  cause,  there  is  some 
reason  for  its  being  thus,  and  so  on  indefinitely. 

Or  let  us  accept  the  other  alternative.  Let  us 
assert  boldly  that  in  A  +  C,  which  is  the  cause  of  B, 
their  relation  makes  no  difference  either  to  A  or  to 
C,  and  yet  accounts  for  the  effect.  Although  the 
conjunction  makes  no  diflerence,  it  justifies  appar- 
ently our  attribution  to  the  cause  of  the  difference 
expressed  by  the  effect.  But  (to  deal  first  with  the 
cause)  such  a  conjunction  of  elements  has  been 
shown  (Chapter  iii.)  to  be  quite  unintelligible.     And 


56 


APPEARANCE, 


to  the  defence  that  it  is  only  our  own  way  of  going 
on,  the  answer  is  twofold.  If  it  is  only  our  way, 
then,  either  it  does  not  concern  the  thing  at  all.  or 
else  is  admitted  to  be  a  mere  practical  makeshift. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  way  of  ours  with  the 
thing  which  we  are  prepared  to  justify,  let  the  justi- 
fication be  produced.  But  it  cannot  be  produced 
in  any  form  but  in  the  proof  that  our  thinking  is 
consistent.  On  the  other  hand,  the  only  reason  for 
our  hesitation  above  to  attribute  our  view  to  reality 
seemed  to  lie  in  the  fact  that  our  view  was  not  con- 
sistent. But,  if  so,  it  surely  should  not  be  our  view. 
And,  to  pass  now  to  the  effect,  the  same  reasoning 
there  holds  good.  The  sequence  of  a  difference 
still  remains  entirely  irrational.  And,  if  we  attempt 
here  to  take  this  difterence  upon  ourselves,  and  to 
urge  that  it  docs  not  attach  to  the  thing,  but  only  to 
our  view,  the  same  result  follows.  For  what  is 
this  but  a  manner  of  admitting  politely  that  in  real- 
ity there  is  no  difference  and  is  no  causation,  and 
that,  in  short,  we  are  all  agreed  in  finding  causation 
to  be  makeshift  and  merely  appearance  ?  We  are 
so  far  agreed,  but  we  differ  in  our  further  conclu- 
sions. For  I  can  discover  no  merit  in  an  attitude 
which  combines  every  vice  of  theory.  It  is  forced 
to  admit  that  the  real  world  is  left  naked  and 
empty;  while  it  cannot  pretend  itself  to  support 
and  to  own  the  wealth  of  e.vistence.  Each  party  is 
robbed,  and  both  parties  are  beggared. 

The  only  positive  result  which  has  appeared  from 
our  effort  to  justify  causation,  seems  to  be  the  im- 
possibility of  isolating  the  cause  or  the  effect.  In 
endeavouring  to  make  a  defensible  assertion,  we 
have  had  to  go  beyond  the  connection  as  first  we 
stated  it.  The  cause  ^  not  only  recedes  backwards 
in  time,  but  it  attempts  laterally  to  take  in  more  and 
more  of  e.xistence.  And  we  are  tending  to  the 
doctrine  that,  to  find  a  real  cause,  we  must  take  the 
complete  state  of  the  world  at  one  moment  as  this 


CAUSATION. 


57 


passes  into  another  state  also  complete.  The  several 
threads  of  causation  seem,  that  is,  always  to  imply 
the  action  of  a  background.  And  this  background 
may,  if  we  arc  judicious,  be  irrelevant  practically. 
It  may  be  practically  irrelevant,  not  because  it  is 
ever  idle,  but  because  often  it  is  identical,  and  so 
makes  no  special  difference.  The  separate  causes 
are,  therefore,  legitimate  abstractions,  and  they  con- 
tain enough  truth  to  be  practically  admissible.  But 
it  will  be  added  that,  if  we  require  truth  in  any 
strict  sense,  we  must  confine  ourselves  to  one  entire 
state  of  the  world.  This  will  be  the  cause,  and  the 
next  entire  state  will  be  the  effect. 

There  is  much  truth  in  this  conclusion,  but  it 
remains  indefensible.  This  tendency  of  the  separ- 
ate cause  to  pass  beyond  itself  cannot  be  .satisfied, 
while  we  retain  the  relational  form  essential  to 
causation.  And  we  may  easily,  I  think,  convince 
ourselves  of  this.  For,  in  the  first  place,  a  complete 
state  of  existence,  as  a  whole,  is  at  any  one  moment 
utterly  impossible.  Any  state  is  forced  by  its  con- 
tent to  transcend  itself  backwards  in  a  regress  with- 
out limit.  And  the  relations  and  qualities  of  which 
it  is  composed  will  refer  themselves,  even  if  you 
keep  to  the  moment,  for  ever  away  from  themselves 
into  endless  dissipation.  Thus  the  complete  state, 
which  is  necessary,  cannot  be  reached.  And,  in 
the  second  place,  there  is  an  objection  which  is 
equally  fatal.  Even  if  we  could  have  one  self- 
comprised  condition  of  the  world  preceding  another, 
the  relation  betwen  them  would  still  be  irrational. 
We  assert  something  of  something  else  ;  we  have  to 
predicate  B  of  A,  or  else  its  sequence  of  A,  or  else 
the  one  relation  of  both.  But  in  these  cases,  or  in 
any  other  case,  can  we  defend  our  assertion  ?  It  is 
the  old  puzzle,  how  to  justify  the  attributing  to  a 
subject  something  other  than  itself,  and  which  the 
subject  is  not.  If  "  followed  by  B"  is  not  the  nature 
of  A,  then  justify  your  predication.     If  it  is  essen- 


58 


APPEARANCE. 


tial  to  A,  then  justify,  first,  your  taking  A  without 
it;  and  in  the  next  place  show  how,  with  such  an 
incongruous  nature,  A  can  succeed  in  being  more 
than  unreal  appearance. 

And  we  may  perhaps  fancy  at  this  point  that  a 
door  of  exit  is  opened.  How  will  it  be,  since  the 
difference  is  the  source  of  our  trouble,  if  we  fall 
back  upon  the  identity  of  cause  and  effect .''  The 
same  essence  of  the  world,  persisting  in  unchanged 
self-conservation  from  moment  to  moment,  and 
superior  to  diversity — this  is  perhaps  the  solution. 
Perhaps;  but,  if  so,  what  has  been  done  with  cau.sa- 
tion  ?  So  far  as  I  am  able  to  understand,  //uii  con- 
sists in  the  differences  and  in  their  sequence  in  time. 
Mere  identity,  however  excellent,  is  emphatically 
itol  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect.  Either  then 
once  more  you  must  take  up  the  problem  of  recon- 
ciling intelligibly  the  diversity  with  the  unity,  and 
this  problem  so  far  has  shown  itself  intractable.  Or 
you  yourself  have  arrived  at  the  same  conclusion 
with  ourselves.  You  liave  admitted  that  cause  and 
effect  is  irrational  appearance,  and  cannot  be  reality. 

I  will  add  here  a  difficuity,  in  itself  superfluous, 
which  comes  from  the  continuity  of  causal  change. 
Its  succession,  on  the  one  hand,  must  be  absolutely 
without  pause  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  it  cannot  be 
so.  This  dilemma  is  based  upon  no  new  principle, 
but  is  a  mere  application  of  the  insoluble  problem  of 
duration.  The  reader  who  is  not  attracted  may 
pass  on. 

For  our  perception  change  is  not  properly  con- 
tinuous. It  cannot  be  so,  since  there  are  durations 
which  do  not  come  to  us  as  such  ;  and  however  our 
faculties  were  improved,  there  must  always  be  a 
point  at  which  they  would  be  transcended.  On  the 
other  hand,  to  speak  of  our  succession  as  being  pro- 
perly discrete  seems  quite  as  indefensible.  It  is  in 
fact  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.     I  presume  that 


CAUSATION. 


59 


what  we  notice  is  events  with  time  between  them, 
whatever  that  may  mean.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
when  we  deal  with  pieces  of  duration,  as  wholes 
containing  parts  and  even  a  variable  diversity  of 
parts,  the  other  aspect  comes  up.  And,  in  the  end, 
reflection  compels  us  to  perceive  that,  liowever  else 
it  may  appear,  all  change  must  really  be  continuous. 
This  conclusion  cannot  imply  that  no  state  is  ever 
able  to  endure  for  a  moment.  Fur,  without  some 
duration  of  the  identical,  we  should  have  meaning- 
less chaos,  or,  rather,  should  not  have  even  that. 
States  may  endure,  we  have  seen,  so  long  as  we 
abstract.  We  take  some  partial  state,  or  aspect  of  a 
stale,  which  in  itself  does  not  alter.  We  fix  one  eye 
upon  this,  while  we  cast,  in  fear  of  no  principle,  our 
other  eye  upon  the  succession  that  goes  with  it,  and 
so  is  called  simultaneous.  And  we  solve  practically 
in  this  way  the  problem  of  duration.  We  have  en- 
during aspects,  A,  B,  C,  one  after  the  other.  Along- 
side of  these  there  runs  on  a  current  of  changes 
minutely  subdivided.  This  goes  on  altering,  and 
in  a  sense  it  alters  A,  B,  C,  while  in  another  sense 
they  are  unchanged  pieces  of  duration.  They  do 
not  alter  in  themselves,  but  in  relation  to  other 
changes  they  are  in  constant  internal  lapse.  And, 
when  these  other  changes  have  reached  a  certain 
point  of  alteration,  then  A  passes  into  B,  and  so 
later  B  into  C.  This  is,  I  presume,  the  proper  way 
of  taking  causation  as  continuous.  We  may  perhaps 
use  the  following  figure  : — 


ABC 

/  I  \  /I  \  /  I  \ 

A~A—A—B~B~^B—C—C—C 

I       I       I       I       I       I       I       I       I 


Here  A,  B,  C,  is  the  causal  succession  of  enduring 
states.  The  Greek  letters  represent  a  flow  of  other 
events  which  are  really  a  determining  element  in 
the  succession  oi  A ,  B,  C.  And  we  understand  at 
once  how  A,  B,  and  C  both  alter  and  do  not  alter. 
But  the  Greek  letters  represent  much  more  which 
cannot  be  depicted.  In  the  first  place,  at  any 
given  moment,  there  are  an  indefinite  number  of 
them  ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  they  themselves  are 
pieces  of  duration,  placed  in  the  same  difficulty 
as  were  A,  B,  C.  Coincident  with  each  must  be  a 
succession  of  events,  which  the  reader  may  try  to 
represent  in  any  character  that  he  prefers.  Only 
let  him  remember  that  these  events  must  be  divided 
indefinitely  by  the  help  of  smaller  ones.  He  must 
go  on  until  he  reaches  parts  that  have  no  divisibility. 
And  if  we  may  suppose  that  he  could  reach  them, 
he  would  find  that  causation  had  vanished  with  his 
success. 

The  dilemma,  I  think,  can  now  be  made  plain, 
(fl)  Causation  must  be  continuous.  For  suppose  that 
it  is  not  so.  You  would  then  be  able  to  take  a  solid 
section  from  the  flow  of  events,  solid  in  the  sense  of 
containing  no  change.  I  do  not  merely  mean  that 
you  could  draw  a  line  without  breadth  across  the 
flow,  and  could  find  that  this  abstraction  cut  no 
alteration.  I  mean  that  you  could  take  a  slice  off, 
and  that  this  slice  would  have  no  change  in  it.  But 
any  such  slice,  being  divisible,  must  have  duration. 
If  so.  however,  you  would  have  your  cause,  en- 
during unchanged  through  a  certain  number  of 
moments,  and  then  suddenly  changing.  And  this 
is  clearly  impossible,  for  what  could  have  altered  it? 
Not  any  other  thing,  for  you  have  taken  the  whole 
course  of  events.  And,  again,  not  itself,  for  you 
have  got  itself  already  without  any  change.  In 
short,  if  the  cause  can  endure  unchanged  for  any 
the  very  smallest  piece  of  duration,  then  it  must 
endure  for   ever.      It  cannot  pass   into   the  effect, 


CAUSATION. 


6i 


and  it  therefore  is  not  a  cause  at  all.  On  the 
other  hand,  {5)  Causation  cannot  be  continuous.  For 
this  would  mean  that  the  cause  was  entirely  without 
duration.  It  would  never  be  itself  except  in  the 
time  occupied  by  a  line  drawn  across  the  succession. 
And  since  this  time  is  not  a  time,  but  a  mere  ab- 
straction, the  cause  itself  will  be  no  better.  It  is 
unreal,  a  nonentity,  and  the  whole  succession  of  the 
world  will  consist  of  these  nonentities.  But  this  is 
much  the  same  as  to  suppose  that  solid  things  are 
made  of  points  and  lines  and  surfaces.  These  may 
be  fictions  useful  for  some  purposes,  but  still  fictions 
they  remain.  The  cause  must  be  a  real  event, 
and  yet  there  is  no  fragment  of  time  in  which  it 
can  be  real.  Causation  is  therefore  not  continuous; 
and  so,  unfortunately,  it  is  not  causation,  but  mere 
appearance. 

The  reader  will  understand  at  once  that  we  have 
repeated  here  the  old  puzzle  about  time.  Time,  as 
we  saw,  must  be  made,  and  yet  cannot  be  made, 
of  pieces.  And  he  perhaps  will  not  be  sorry  to 
have  reached  an  end  of  these  pages  through  which  I 
have  been  forced  to  weary  him  with  continuity  and 
discreteness.  In  the  ne.\t  chapter  we  shall  arrive  at 
somewhat  different  matter. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
ACT/y/rv. 

In  raising  the  question  if  activity  is  real  or  is  only 
appearance,  I  may  be  met  by  the  assertion  that  it  is- 
original,  ultimate,  and  simple.  I  am  satisfied  my- 
self that  this  assertion  is  incorrect,  and  is  even  quite 
groundless  ;  but  I  prefer  to  treat  it  here  as  merely 
irrelevant.  If  the  meaning  of  activity  will  not  bear 
examination,  and  if  it  fails  to  exhibit  itself  intel- 
ligibly, then  that  meaning  cannot,  as  such,  be  true  of 
reality.  There  can  be  no  origin,  or  want  of  origin, 
which  warrants  our  predicating  nonsense.  And  if  I 
am  told  that,  being  simple,  activity  can  have  no 
meaning,  then  it  seems  a  quality  like  one  of  our 
sensations  or  pleasures,  and  we  have  dealt  with  it 
already.  Or  I  may  possibly  be  answered,  No,  it  is 
not  simple  in  that  sense,  nor  yet  exactly  composite. 
It  somehow  holds  a  variety,  and  is  given  in  that 
character.  Hence  its  idea  may  be  indefensible, 
while  itself  Is  real.  But  the  business  of  metaphysics 
is  surely  to  understand;  and  If  anything  is  such  that, 
when  thought  of  and  not  simply  felt,  it  goes  to 
pieces  in  our  hands,  we  can  find  but  one  verdict. 
Either  its  nature  is  nonsensical,  or  we  have  got 
wrong  Ideas  about  it.  The  assertor  of  the  latter 
alternative  should  then  present  us  with  the  right 
ideas — a  thing  which,  I  need  not  add,  he  is  not 
forward  to  perform.  But  let  us  leave  these  poor 
excuses  to  take  care  of  themselves,  and  let  us  turn 
to  the  facts.  There,  if  we  examine  the  way  in 
which  the  term  activity  is  employed,  the  result  is 

6i 


ACTIVITY. 


63 


not  doubtful.  Force,  energy,  power,  activity,  these 
phrases  certainly  are  used  too  often  without  clear 
understanding.  But  no  rational  man  employs  them 
except  to  convey  some  kind  of  meanin,c,^  which  is 
capable  of  being  discovered  and  subjected  to  ana- 
lysis. And  if  it  will  not  bear  scrutiny,  then  it 
clearly  does  not  represent  reality. 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  wonls  like  power,  force, 
or  energy,  are  distinguished  from  activity.  They 
may  be  used  to  stand  for  something  that  does  not 
happen  at  all,  but  somehow  remains  in  a  state  of 
suspended  animation,  or  in  a  region  between  non- 
existence and  existence.  I  do  not  think  it  worth 
while  to  discuss  this  at  present,  and  shall  pass  at 
once  to  the  signification  in  which  force  means  force 
in  exercise — in  other  words,  activity. 

The  element  in  its  meaning,  which  comes  to  light 
at  once,  is  succession  and  change.  In  all  activity 
something  clearly  becomes  something  else.  Activity 
implies  a  happening  and  a  sequence  in  time.  And, 
when  I  spoke  of  this  meaning  as  coming  to  the 
light,  I  might  have  added  that  it  positively  stares  us 
in  the  face,  and  it  is  not  to  be  hidden.  To  deal 
frankly,  I  do  not  know  how  to  argue  this  question. 
I  have  never  seen  a  use  of  the  term  which  to  my 
mind  retained  its  sense  if  time-sequence  is  removed. 
We  can,  of  course,  talk  of  a  power  sustaining  or  pro- 
ducing effects,  which  are  subordinate  and  yet  not 
subsequent;  but  to  talk  thus  is  not  to  think.  And 
unless  the  sequence  of  our  thought,  from  the  power 
to  its  manifestation,  is  transferred  to  the  fact  as  a 
succession  there,  the  meaning  is  gone.  We  are  left 
with  mere  co-existence,  and  the  dependence,  either 
of  adjective  on  substantive,  or  of  two  adjectives  on 
one  another  and  on  the  substance  which  owns  them. 
And  I  do  not  believe  that  anyone,  unless  inlluenced 
by,  and  in  the  service  of,  some  theory,  would  attempt 
to  view  the  matter  otherwise.  And  I  fear  that  I 
must  so  leave  it. 


64 


APPEARANCE. 


Activity  implies  the  change  of  something  into 
something  dift'erenL  So  much,  1  think,  is  clear  ; 
but  activity  is  not  a  mere  uncaused  alteration.  And 
in  fact,  as  we  have  seen,  that  is  really  not  conceiv- 
able. For  Ab  to  become  Ac,  something  else  be- 
side Ab  is  felt  to  be  necessary  ;  or  else  we  are  left 
with  a  flat  self-contradiction.  Thus  the  transition  of 
activity  implies  always  a  cause. 

Activity  is  caused  change,  but  it  also  must  be 
more.  For  one  thinjj.  altered  by  another,  is  not 
usually  thought  active,  but,  on  the  contrary,  passive. 
Activity  seems  rather  to  be  self-caused  change.  A 
transition  that  begins  with,  and  comes  out  of,  the 
thing  itself  is  the  process  where  we  feel  that  it  is 
active.  The  issue  must,  of  course,  be  attributed  to 
the  thing  as  its  adjective;  it  must  be  regarded,  not 
only  as  belonging  to  the  thing,  but  as  beginning  in 
it  and  coming  out  of  it.  If  a  thing  carries  out  its 
own  nature  we  call  the  thing  active. 

But  we  are  aware,  or  may  become  aware,  that  we 
are  here  resting  on  metaphors.  These  cannot  quite 
mean  what  they  say,  and  what  they  intimate  is  still 
doubtful.  It  appears  to  be  something  of  this  kind: 
the  end  of  the  process,  the  result  or  the  effect, 
seems  part  of  the  nature  of  the  thing  which  we  had 
at  the  beginning.  Not  only  has  it  not  been  added 
by  something  outside,  but  it  is  hardly  to  be  taken  as 
an  addition  at  all.  So  far.  at  least,  as  the  end  is 
considered  as  the  thing's  activity,  it  is  regarded  as 
the  thing's  character  from  the  first  to  the  last.  Thus 
it  somehow  was  before  it  happened.  It  did  not 
exist,  and  yet,  for  all  that,  in  a  manner  it  was  there, 
and  so  it  became.  We  should  like  to  say  that  the 
nature  of  the  thing,  which  was  ideal,  realized  itself, 
and  that  this  process  is  what  we  mean  by  activity. 
And  the  idea  need  not  be  an  idea  in  the  mind  of  the 
thing  ;  for  the  thing,  perhaps,  has  no  mind,  and  so 
cannot  have  that  which  would  amount  to  volition. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  idea  in  the  thing  is  not  a 


ACTIVITY. 


mere  idea  in  our  minds  which  rue  have  merely  about 
the  thing.  We  are  sure  of  this,  and  our  meaning 
falls  between  these  extremes.  But  where  precisely 
it  falls,  and  in  what  exactly  it  consists,  seems  at 
present  far  from  clear.  Let  us,  however,  try  to  go 
forwards. 

Passivity  seems  to  imply  activity.  It  is  the  alter- 
ation of  the  thing,  in  which,  of  course,  the  thing 
survives,  and  acquires  a  fresh  adjective.  This 
adjective  was  not  possessed  by  the  thing  before  the 
change.  It  therefore  does  not  belong  to  its  nature, 
but  is  a  foreign  importation.  It  proceeds  from,  and 
is  the  adjective  of,  another  thing  which  is  active 
— at  the  expense  of  the  first.  Thus  passivity  is 
not  po.ssible  without  activity ;  and  its  meaning  is 
obviously  still  left  unexplained. 

It  is  natural  to  ask  next  if  activity  can  exist  by 
itself  and  apart  from  passivity.  And  here  we  begin 
to  involve  ourselves  in  further  obscurity.  We  have 
spoken  so  far  as  if  a  thing  almost  began  to  be  active 
without  any  reason  ;  as  if  it  exploded,  so  to  speak, 
and  produced  its  contents  entirely  on  its  own  motion. 
and  quite  spontaneously.  But  this  we  never  really 
meant  to  say.  for  this  would  mean  a  happening  and 
a  change  without  any  cause  at  all  ;  and  this,  we 
agreed  long  ago,  is  a  self-contradiction  and  im- 
possible. The  thing,  therefore,  is  not  active  without 
an  occasion.  This,  call  it  what  you  please,  is  some- 
thing outside  the  standing  nature  of  the  thing,  and  is 
accidental  in  the  sense  of  happening  to  that  essential 
disposition.  But  if  the  thing  cannot  act  unless  the 
act  is  occasioned,  then  the  transition,  so  far,  is  im: 
ported  into  it  by  the  act  of  something  outside.  But^ 
this,  as  we  saw,  was  passivity.  Whatever  acts  then 
must  be  passive,  so  far  as  its  change  is  occasioned. 
If  we  look  at  the  process  as  the  coming  out  of  its 
nature,  the  process  is  its  activity.  If  we  regard  the 
same  process,  on  the  other  hand,  as  due  to  the 
occasion,   and,    as  we  say,  coming    from    that,   we 

A.  K.  1- 


66 


APPEARANCE. 


Still  have  activity.  But  the  activity  now  belongs  to 
the  occasion,  and  the  thing  is  passive.  We  seem  to 
have  diverse  aspects,  of  which  the  special  existence 
in  each  case  will  depend  on  our  own  minds. 

We  find  this  ambiguity  in  the  common  distinction 
between  cause  and  condition,  and  it  is  worth  our 
while  to  examine  this  more  closely.  Both  of  these 
elements  are  taken  to  be  wanted  for  the  production 
of  the  effect ;  but  in  any  given  case  we  seem  able  to 
apply  the  names  almost,  or  quite,  at  discretion.  It 
is  not  unusual  to  call  the  last  thing  which  happens 
the  cause  of  the  process  which  ensues.  But  this  is 
really  just  as  we  please.  The  body  fell  because  the 
support  was  taken  away  ;  but  probably  most  men 
would  prefer  to  call  this  "  cause  "  a  condition  of  a 
certain  kind.  But  apparently  we  may  gratify  what- 
ever preference  we  feel.  And  the  well-meant 
attempt  to  get  clear  by  defining  the  cause  as  the 
"  sum  of  the  conditions  "  does  not  much  enlighten 
us.  As  to  the  word  "  sum,"  it  is,  I  presume, 
intended  to  carry  a  meaning,  but  this  meaning  is 
not  stated,  and  1  doubt  if  it  is  known.  And,  further, 
if  the  cause  is  taken  as  including  every  single  con 
dition,  we  are  met  by  a  former  difficulty.  Either 
this  cause,  not  existing  through  any  part  of  duration, 
is  really  non-existent ;  or  else  a  condition  will  be 
wanted  to  account  for  its  change  and  its  passing  into 
activity.  But  if  the  cause  already  includes  all.  then, 
of  course,  none  is  available  (Chapter  vi.).  But,  to 
pass  this  point  by,  what  do  you  mean  by  these  condi- 
tions, that  all  fall  within  the  cause,  so  as  to  leave  none 
outside  ?  Do  you  mean  that  what  we  commonly 
call  the  "  conditions  "  of  an  event  are  really  com- 
plete ?  In  practice  certainly  we  leave  out  of  the 
account  the  whole  background  of  existence  ;  we 
isolate  a  group  of  elements,  and  we  say  that, 
whenever  these  occur,  then  something  else  always 
happens  ;  and  in  this  group  we  consider  ourselves 
to  possess  the  "  sum  of  the  conditions."      And  this 


ACTIVITY. 


assumption  may  be  practically  defensible,  since  the 
rest  of  existence  may,  on  sufficient  ground,  be  taken 
as  irrelevant.  We  can  therefore  treat  this  whole 
mass  as  if  it  were  inactive.  Yes,  but  that  is  one 
thing,  and  it  is  quite  another  thing  to  assert  that 
really  this  mass  does  nothing.  Certainly  there  is  no 
logic  which  can  warrant  such  a  misuse  of  abstraction. 
The  background  of  the  whole  world  can  be  elimin- 
ated by  no  sound  process,  and  the  furthest  conclusion, 
which  can  be  logical,  is  that  we  need  not  consider  it 
practically.  As  in  a  number  of  diverse  cases  it 
seems  to  add  nothing  special,  we  may  for  each 
purpose  consider  that  it  adds  nothing  at  all.  But 
to  give  out  this  working  doctrine  as  theoretically 
true  is  quite  illegitimate. 

The  immediate  result  of  this  is  that  the  true  "  sum 
of  conditions"  must  completely  include  all  the 
contents  of  the  world  at  a  given  time.  And  here 
we  run  against  a  theoretical  obstacle.  The  nature 
of  these  contents  seems  such  as  to  be  essentially 
incomplete,  and  so  the  "  sum  "  to  be  nothing  attain- 
able. This  appears  fatal  so  far,  and,  having  stated 
it,  I  pass  on.  Suppose  that  you  /lavegot  a  complete 
sum  of  the  facts  at  one  moment,  are  you  any  nearer 
a  result  ?  This  entire  mass  will  be  the  '■  sum  of 
conditions,"  and  the  cause  of  each  following  event. 
For  there  is  no  process  which  will  warrant  your 
taking  the  cause  as  /ess.  Here  there  is  at  once 
another  theoretical  trouble,  for  the  same  cause 
produces  a  number  of  different  effects  ;  and  how  will 
you  deal  with  that  consequence .''  But,  leaving  this. 
we  are  practically  in  an  equal  dilemma.  For  the 
cause,  taken  so  widely,  is  the  cause  of  everything 
alike,  and  hence  it  can  tell  us  nothing  about  any- 
thing special ;  and,  taken  less  widely,  it  is  not  the 
sum,  and  therefore  not  the  cause.  And  by  this 
time  it  is  obvious  that  our  doctrine  must  be  given 
up.  If  we  want  to  discover  a  particular  cau.se  (and 
nothing  else  is  a  discovery),  we  must  make  a  dis 


f 


68 


APPEARANCE. 


tinction  in  the  "sum."  Then,  as  before,  in  every 
case  we  have  conditions  beside  the  cause  ;  and,  as 
before,  we  are  asked  for  a  principle  by  which  to 
effect  the  distinction  between  them.  And,  for  myself. 
I  return  to  the  statement  that  I  know  of  none  which 
is  sound.  We  seem  to  effect  this  distinction  always 
to  suit  a  certain  purpose  ;  and  it  appears  to  consist 
in  our  mere  adoption  of  a  special  point  of  view. 

But  let  us  return  to  the  consideration  of  passivity 
and  activity.  It  is  certain  that  nothing  can  be  active 
without  an  occasion,  and  that  what  is  active,  being 
made  thus  by  the  occasion,  is  so  far  passive.  The 
occasion,  again,  since  it  enters  into  the  causal  process 
— a  thing  it  never  would  have  done  if  left  to  itself — 
suffers  a  change  from  the  cause ;  and  it  therefore 
itself  is  passive  in  its  activity.  If  the  cause  is  A, 
and  the  occasion  B.  then  each  is  active  or  passive, 
according  as  you  view  the  result  as  the  expression 
of  its  nature,  or  as  an  adjective  Imported  from  out- 
side. 

And  we  are  naturally  brought  here  to  a  case 
where  both  these  aspects  seem  to  vanish.  For 
suppose,  as  before,  that  we  have  A  and  B,  which 
enter  into  one  process,  and  let  us  call  the  result 
A  CB.  Here  A  will  suffer  a  change,  and  so  also  will 
B  ;  and  each  again  may  be  said  to  produce  change 
in  the  other.  But  if  the  nature  of  A  was,  before, 
A  elf,  and  the  nature  of  B  was,  before,  Bca,  we  are 
brought  to  a  pause.  The  ideas  which  we  are 
applying  are  now  plainly  inadequate  and  likely  to 
confuse  us.  To  A  and  B  themselves  they  might 
even  appear  to  be  ridiculous.  How  do  I  suffer  a 
change,  each  would  answer,  if  it  is  nothing  else  but 
what  I  will  ?  We  cannot  adopt  your  points  of 
view,  since  they  seem  at  best  quite  irrelevant. 

To  pass  to  another  head,  the  conclusion,  which  so 
far  we  have  reached,  seems  to  e.xclude  the  possibility 
of  one  thing  by  itself  being  active.     Here  we  must 


ACTIVITY. 


69 


make  a  distinction.  If  this  supposed  thing  had  no 
variety  in  its  nature,  or,  again,  if  its  variety  did  not 
change  in  time  within  it,  then  it  is  impossible  that  it 
should  be  active.  The  idea,  indeed,  is  self-contra- 
dictory. Nor  could  one  thing  again  be  said  to  be 
active  as  a  whole  ;  for  that  part  of  its  nature  which, 
changing,  served  as  the  occasion  could  not  be  in- 
cluded. I  do  not  propose  to  argue  these  points,  for 
I  do  not  perceive  anything  on  the  other  side  beyond 
confusion  or  prejudice.  And  hence  it  is  certain  that 
activity  implies  finitude,  and  otherwise  possesses  no 
meaning.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  naturally  where 
there  are  a  variety  of  elements,  changing  in  time,  we 
may  have  activity.  For  part  of  these  elements  may 
suffer  change  from,  and  may  produce  it  in,  others. 
Indeed,  the  question  whether  this  is  to  go  on  inside 
one  thing  by  itself,  appears  totally  irrelevant,  until 
at  least  we  have  some  idea  of  what  we  mean  by  one 
thing.  And  our  enquiries,  so  far,  have  not  tended 
to  establish  any  meaning.  It  is  as  if  we  enquired 
about  hermaphroditism,  where  we  do  not  know  what 
we  understand  by  a  single  animal.  Indeed,  if  we 
returned  at  this  point  to  our  A  and  B  connected  in 
one  single  process,  and  enquired  of  them  if  they  both 
were  parts  of  one  thing,  or  were  each  one  thing  con- 
taining a  whole  process  of  change,  we  should 
probably  get  no  answer.  They  would  once  more 
recommend  us  to  improve  our  own  ideas  before  we 
went  about  applying  them. 

Our  result  up  to  this  point  appears  to  be  much 
as  follows.  Activity,  under  any  of  the  phrases  used 
to  carry  that  idea,  is  a  mass  of  inconsistency.  It  is, 
in  the  first  place,  riddled  by  the  contradictions  of  the 
preceding  chapters,  and  if  it  cannot  be  freed  from 
these,  it  must  be  condemned  as  appearance.  And 
its  own  special  nature,  so  far  as  we  have  discovered 
that,  seems  certainly  no  better.  The  activity  of 
anything  seems  to  consist  in  the  way  in  which  we 
choose  to  look  at  that  which  it  is  and  becomes.     For, 


~0  APPEARAXCE. 

apart  firom  the  inner  nature  which  comes  out  in  the 
result,  activity  has  no  meanii^.  If  this  nature  was 
not  there,  and  was  not  real  in  the  thing,  is  the  thing 
really  active  ?  But  when  we  press  this  question 
home,  and  insist  on  having  something  more  tl^n 
insincere  metaphors,  we  find  either  nothu^.  or  else 
the  idea  which  m  are  fJeased  to  oitertain.  And 
this,  as  an  idea,  we  dare  not  attribute  to  the  thing, 
and  we  do  not  know  how  to  attribute  it  as  anything 
else.  But  a  confusion  of  this  kind  cannot  belong  to 
reality. 

Throughout  this  chapter  I  have  ignored  a  certain 
view  about  activity.  This  view  would  admit  that 
activity',  as  we  have  discussed  it,  is  untenable ;  but 
it  would  add  that  we  have  not  even  touched  the  real 
facL  And  this  fact,  it  would  urge,  is  the  activit>' 
of  a  self,  while  outside  self  the  application  of  die 
term  is  metaphorical.  And,  with  this  question  in 
prospect,  we  may  turn  to  another  series  of  con- 
siderations about  reality. 


»•  - 


^ 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


THINGS. 


Before  proceeding  further  we  may  conveniently 
pause  at  this  point.  The  reader  may  be  asked  to 
reflect  whether  anything  of  what  is  understood  by 
a  thing  is  left  to  us.  It  is  hard  to  say  what,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  is  generally  understood  when  we  use 
the  word  "  thing."  But,  whatever  that  may  be, 
seems  now  undermined  and  ruined.  I  suppose  we 
generally  take  a  thing  as  possessing  some  kind  of 
independence,  and  a  sort  of  title  to  exist  in  its  own 
right,  and  not  as  a  mere  adjective.  But  our  ideas 
are  usually  not  clear.  A  rainbow  probably  is  not 
a  thing,  while  a  waterfall  might  get  the  name,  and 
a  flash  of  lightning  be  left  in  a  doubtful  position. 
Further,  while  many  of  us  would  assert  stoutly  that 
a  thing  must  exist,  if  at  all,  in  space,  others  would 
question  this  and  fail  to  perceive  its  conclusiveness. 
VVe  have  seen  how  the  attempt  to  reconstitute 
our  ideas  by  the  help  of  primary  qualities  broke 
down.  And,  since  then,  the  results,  which  we  have 
reached,  really  seem  to  have  destroyed  things  from 
without  and  from  within.  If  the  connection  of  sub- 
stantive and  adjective,  and  of  quality  and  relation, 
have  been  shown  not  to  be  defensible ;  if  the  forms 
of  space  and  of  time  have  turned  out  to  be  full  of 
contradictions  ;  if,  lastly,  causation  and  activity  have 
succeeded  merely  in  adding  inconsistency  to  incon- 
sistency,— if,  in  a  word,  nothing  of  all  this  can,  as 
such,  be  predicated  of  reality, — what  is  it  that  is 
left .''     If  things  are  to  exist,  then   where  and  how  .•* 


72  AFPEAKAJ9CE. 

Bat  if  ihese  two  qnestians  are  unansveraUe,  tben 
we  seesn  dnven  to  the  coDctnaoD  that  tMngs  are 
but  appearances.  And  I  wiQ  add  a  few  remaiics, 
iM}t  so  much  IB  sn|:^xxrt  of  this  conclusion  as  in  order 
to  snake  it  possably  more  plain. 

I  wis  come  to  liie  point  at  once.  For  a  tiling  to 
lexist  it  most  po»es  identity ;  and  identity  seems 
;a  possesion  widi  a  character  at  best  doubdiiL  If 
it  is  merdy  ideal,  the  tiling  itseM  can  hardly  be  real 
Fast,  tiieo,  kt  us  inquire  if  a  thing  can  exist  vitlioat 
idmtrty.  To  as^  t£is  question  is  at  once  to  answer 
it ;  unless,  inde^  a  tiling  is  to  exist,  and  is  to  faa3d 
its  divessity  combated  tn  an  unity,  somebow  quite 
outside  of  time.  And  tliis  seems  untenable.  A 
thing,  if  it  is  to  be  cafied  soch,  must  occupy  soane 
duration  be3;a>nd  tbe  present  moment,  and  bence 
succesaon  is  essentiaL  Tbe  thing,  to  be  at  all,  most 
be  tbe  same  after  a  change,  and  tbe  cbange  must, 
to  some  extent,  be  predicated  of  tbe  tMng.  If  yon 
suppose  a  case  so  sinqiHe  as  tbe  moTement  of  an 
atom,  tbat  is  enough  ibr  our  purpose.  For,  if  tbis 
^  thing  "  does  not  move,  tbere  is  no  motion.  But. 
if  it  mores,  tben  snccession  is  predicated  of  it,  and 
the  thing  is  a  bond  of  identity  in  diffisrenoes.  And, 
further,  this  ideality  is  ideal,  ance  it  consists  in  the 
content,  or  in  tbe  ■"  what  we  are  able  to  say  of  the 
thing.^  For  raise  die  doubt  at  tbe  end  of  oar 
atom's  process,  if  tbe  atom  is  tbe  same.  Tbe  ques- 
tion raised  cannot  be  answered  without  an  ajipeal 
to  its  character.  It  is  different  in  one  respect — 
namely,  the  change  of  place ;  but  in  another  res^xxt 
— ^that  of  its  own  character — it  remains  tbe  same. 
.And  this  respect  is  obviously  identical  cxmtent.  Or, 
if  any  one  objects  that  an  atom  has  no  content,  let 
him  throughout  substitute  tbe  word  "body,"  and 
settle  with  himseJf  how,  without  any  qualitative  dif- 
ference (such  as  right  and  left),  he  distingui^ies 
atoms.  And  this  identical  content  is  called  ideal 
because  it  transcends  given  existence.     Existence 


THINGS. 


11 


is  given  only  in  presentation;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  thing  is  a  thing  only  if  its  existence  goes  beyond 
the  now,  and  extends  into  the  past.  I  will  not  here  dis- 
cuss the  question  as  to  the  identity  of  a  thing  during 
a  presented  lapse,  for  I  doubt  if  any  one  would 
wish  to  except  to  our  conclusion  on  that  ground. 

Now  I  am  not  here  raising  the  whole  question 
of  the  Identity  of  Indiscernibles.  I  am  urging 
rather  that  the  continuity,  which  is  necessary  to  a 
thing,  seems  to  depend  on  its  keeping  an  identity 
of  character.  A  thing  is  a  thing,  in  short,  by  being 
what  it  ivas-  And  it  does  not  appear  how  this  / 
relation  of  sameness  can  be  real.  It  is  a  relation  ' 
connecting  the  past  with  the  present,  and  this  con- 
nection is  evidently  vital  to  the  thing.  But,  if  so, 
the  thing  has  become,  in  more  senses  than  one,  the 
relation  of  passages  in  its  own  history.  And  if  we 
assert  that  the  thing  is  this  inclusive  relation,  which 
transcends  any  given  time,  surely  we  have  allowed 
that  the  thing,  though  not  wholly  an  idea,  is  an  idea 
essentially.  And  it  is  an  idea  which  at  no  actual 
time  is  ever  real. 

And  this  problem  is  no  mere  abstract  invented 
subtlety,  but  shows  itself  in  practice.  It  is  often 
impossible  to  reply  when  we  are  asked  if  an  object 
is  really  the  same.  If  a  manufactured  article  has 
been  worked  upon  and  partly  remade,  such  a  ques- 
tion may  have  no  sense  until  it  has  been  specified. 
You  must  go  on  to  mention  the  point  or  the  par- 
ticular respect  of  which  you  are  thinking.  For 
questions  of  identity  turn  always  upon  sameness 
in  character,  and  the  reason  why  here  you  cannot 
reply  generally,  is  because  you  do  not  know  this 
general  character  which  is  taken  to  make  the  thing's 
essence.  It  is  not  always  material  substance,  for 
we  might  call  an  organism  identical,  though  its  par- 
ticles were  all  different.  It  is  not  always  shape,  or 
size,  or  colour,  or,  again,  always  the  purpose  which 
the  thing  fulfils.     The  general   nature,  in  fact,  of  a 


74  APPEAKAXCE. 

thing's  identit>'  seems  to  lie,  first,  in  the  avoidance 
of  any  absolute  break  in  its  existence,  and,  beyond 
that,  to  consist  in  some  qualitative  sameness  which 
differs  with  different  things^  And  with  some  things 
— because  literally  we  do  not  know  in  what  charac- 
ter their  sameness  lies — we  are  helpless  when  asked 
if  identity'  has  been  preserved.  If  any  one  wants 
an  instance  of  the  value  of  our  ordinary  notions, 
he  may  find  it,  perhaps,  in  Sir  John  Cutler's  silk 
stockings.  These  were  darned  with  worsted  until 
no  particle  of  the  silk  was  left  in  them,  and  no  one 
could  agree  whether  they  were  the  same  old  stock- 
ings or  were  new  ones.  In  brief,  the  identity  of 
a  thing  lies  in  the  view  which  you  take  of  it.  That 
view  seems  often  a  mere  chance  idea,  and,  where 
it  seems  necessary,  it  still  remains  an  idea.  Or,  if 
you  prefer  it,  it  is  a  character,  which  exists  outside 
of  and  beyond  any  fact  which  you  can  take.  But 
it  is  not  easy  to  see  how,  if  so,  any  thing  can  be 
real.  And  diings  have,  so  far,  turned  out  to  be 
merely  appearances. 


CHAPTER  IX. 


THE    MEANINGS    OF   SELF. 

Our  facts  have,  up  to  the  present,  turned  out  to  be 
illusory.  We  have  seen  our  things  go  to  pieces, 
crumbled  away  into  relations  that  can  find  no  terms. 
And  we  have  begun,  perhaps,  to  feel  some  doubt 
whether,  since  the  plague  is  so  deep-rooted,  it  can 
be  stayed  at  any  point.  At  the  close  of  our  seventh 
chapter  we  were  naturally  led  beyond  the  inanimate, 
and  up  to  the  self.  And  here,  in  the  opinion  of 
many,  is  the  end  of  our  troubles.  The  self,  they 
will  assure  us,  is  not  apparent,  but  quite  real.  And 
it  is  not  only  real  in  itself,  but  its  reality,  if  I  may 
say  so,  spreads  beyond  its  own  limits  and  rehabili- 
tates the  selfless.  It  provides  a  fixed  nucleus  round 
which  the  facts  can  group  themselves  securely.  Or 
it,  in  some  way.  at  least  provides  us  with  a  type, 
by  the  aid  of  which  we  may  go  on  to  comprehend 
the  world.  And  we  must  now  proceed  to  a  serious 
examination  of  this  claim.  Is  the  self  real,  is  it 
anything  which  we  can  predicate  of  reality  ^  Or 
is  it,  on  the  other  hand,  like  all  the  preceding,  a 
mere  appearance — something  which  is  given,  and, 
in  a  sense,  most  certainly  exists,  but  which  is  too 
full  of  contradictions  to  be  the  genuine  fact  ?  I 
have  been  forced  to  embrace  the  latter  conclusion. 

There  is  a  great  obstacle  in  the  path  of  the  pro- 
posed inquiry.  A  man  commonly  thinks  that  he 
knows  what  he  means  by  his  self  He  may  be  in 
doubt  about  other  things,  but  here  he  seems  to  be 
at  home.      He  fancies  that  with  the  self  he  at  once 


APPEARANCE. 


comprehends  both  that  it  is  and  what  it  is.  And 
of  course  the  fact  of  one's  own  existence,  in  some 
sense,  is  quite  beyond  doubt.  But  as  to  the  sense 
in  which  this  existence  is  so  certain,  there  the  case 
is  far  otherwise.  And  I  should  have  thought  that 
no  one,  who  gives  his  attention  to  this  question, 
could  fail  to  come  to  one  preliminary  result.  We 
are  all  sure  that  we  exist,  but  in  what  sense  and 
what  character — as  to  that  we  are  most  of  us  in  help- 
less uncertainty  and  in  blind  confusion.  And  so 
far  is  the  self  from  being  clearer  than  things  out- 
side us  that,  to  speak  generally,  we  never  know 
what  we  mean  when  we  talk  of  it.  But  the  mean- 
ing and  the  sense  is  surely  for  metaphysics  the  vital 
point  For,  if  none  defensible  can  be  found,  such 
a  failure,  I  must  insist,  ought  to  end  the  question. 
Anything  the  meaning  of  which  is  inconsistent  and 
unintelligible  is  appearance,  and  not  reality. 

I  must  use  nearly  the  whole  of  this  chapter  in 
trying  to  fix  some  of  the  meanings  in  which  self  is 
used.  And  I  am  forced  to  trespass  inside  the  limits 
of  psychology  ;  as,  indeed,  I  think  is  c^uite  necessary 
in  several  parts  of  metaphysics.  I  do  not  mean  that 
metaphysics  is  based  upon  psychology.  1  am  quite 
convinced  that  such  a  foundation  is  impossible,  and 
that,  if  attempted,  it  produces  a  disastrous  hybrid 
which  possesses  the  merits  of  neither  science.  The 
metaphysics  will  come  in  to  check  a  resolute  analysis, 
and  the  psychology  will  furnish  excuses  for  half- 
hearted metaphysics.  And  there  can  be  really  no 
such  science  as  the  theory  of  cognition.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  metaphysician,  who  is  no  psycholo- 
gist, runs  great  dangers.  For  he  must  take  up,  and 
must  work  upon,  the  facts  about  the  soul ;  and,  if  he 
has  not  tried  to  learn  what  they  are,  the  risk  is  very 
serious.  The  psychological  monster  he  may  adopt 
is  certain  also,  no  doubt,  to  be  monstrous  metaphys- 
ically ;  and  the  supposed  fact  of  its  existence  does 
not  prove  it  less  monstrous.     But  experience  shows 


THE   MEANINGS   OF   S 


that  human  beings,  even  when  metaphysical,  lack 
courage  at  some  point.  And  we  cannot  afford  to 
deal  with  monsters,  who  in  the  end  may  seduce  us,  and 
who  are  certain  sometimes,  at  any  rate,  to  be  much 
in  our  way.  But  I  am  only  too  sensible  that,  with 
all  our  care,  the  danger  nearest  each  is  least  seen. 

I  will  merely  mention  that  use  of  self  which 
identifies  it  with  the  body.  As  to  our  perception  of 
our  own  bodies,  there,  of  course,  exists  some  psycho- 
logical error.  And  this  may  take  a  metaphysical 
form  if  it  tries  to  warrant,  through  some  immediate 
revelation,  the  e.xistence  of  the  organism  as  some- 
how the  real  expression  of  the  self.  But  I  intend 
to  pass  all  this  by.  For,  at  the  point  which  we 
have  reached,  there  seems  no  exit  by  such  a  road 
from  familiar  difficulties. 

1.  Let  lis  then,  excluding  the  body  as  an  outward 
thing,  go  on  to  inquire  into  the  meanings  of  self. 
And  the  first  of  these  is  pretty  clear.  By  asking 
what  is  the  self  of  this  or  that  individual  man,  I 
may  be  enquiring  as  to  the  present  contents  of  his 
experience.  Take  a  section  through  the  man  at 
any  given  moment.  You  will  then  find  a  mass  of 
feelings,  and  thoughts,  and  sensations,  which  come 
to  him  as  the  world  of  things  and  other  persons, 
and  again  as  himself;  and  this  contains,  of  course, 
his  views  and  his  wishes  about  everything.  Every- 
thing, self  and  not-self,  and  what  is  not  distinguished 
as  either,  in  short  the  total  filling  of  the  man's 
soul  at  this  or  that  moment — we  may  understand 
this  when  we  ask  what  is  the  individual  at  a  given 
time.  There  is  no  difficulty  here  in  principle, 
though  the  detail  would  naturally  (as  detail)  be 
unmanageable.  But,  for  our  present  purpose,  such 
a  sense  is  obviously  not  promising. 

2.  The  congeries  inside  a  man  at  one  given 
moment  does  not  satisfy  as  an  answer  to  the 
question  what  is  self.  The  self,  to  go  no  further, 
must    be  something    beyond    present    time,    and    it 


78 


APPEARANCE. 


cannot  contain  a  sequence  of  contradictory  varia- 
tions. Let  us  then  modify  our  answer,  and  say. 
Not  the  mass  of  any  one  moment,  but  the  constant 
average  mass,  is  the  meaning  of  self.  Take,  as 
before,  a  section  completely  through  the  man,  and 
expose  his  total  psychical  contents  ;  only  now  take 
this  section  at  different  times,  and  remove  what 
seems  exceptional.  The  residue  will  be  the  normal 
and  ordinary  matter,  which  fills  his  experience ;  and 
this  is  the  self  of  the  individual.  This  self  will 
contain,  as  before,  the  perceived  environment — in 
short,  the  not-self  so  far  as  that  is  for  the  self — 
but  it  will  contain  now  only  the  usual  or  average 
not-self.  And  it  must  embrace  the  habits  of  the 
individual  and  the  laws  of  his  character — whatever 
we  mean  by  these.  His  self  will  be  the  usual 
manner  in  which  he  behaves,  and  the  usual  matter 
to  which  he  behaves,  that  is,  so  far  as  he  behaves 
to  it. 

We  are  tending  here  towards  the  distinction  of 
the  essential  self  from  its  accidents,  but  we  have 
not  yet  reached  that  point.  We  have,  however,  left 
the  self  as  the  whole  individual  of  one  moment,  or 
of  succeeding  moments,  and  are  trying  to  find  it  as 
the  individual's  normal  constituents.  What  is  that 
which  makes  the  man  his  usual  self.-*  We  have 
answered.  It  is  his  habitual  disposition  and  con- 
tents, and  it  is  not  his  changes  from  day  to  day  and 
from  hour  to  hour.  These  contents  are  not  merely 
the  man's  internal  feelings,  or  merely  that  which  he 
reflects  on  as  his  self.  They  consist  quite  as  essen- 
tially in  the  outward  environment,  so  far  as  relation 
to  that  makes  the  man  what  he  is.  For,  if  we  try 
to  take  the  man  apart  from  certain  places  and 
persons,  we  have  altered  his  life  so  much  that  he  is 
not  his  usual  self.  Again,  some  of  this  habitual 
not-.self,  to  use  that  expression,  enters  into  the 
man's  life  in  its  individual  form.  His  wife  possibly, 
or  his  child,   or,  again,  some  part  or  feature  of  his 


THE    MEANINGS    OF   SELF. 


79 


inanimate  environment,  could  not,  if  destroyed,  be 
so  made  good  by  anything  else  that  the  man's  self 
would  fail  to  be  seriously  modified.  Hence  we 
may  call  these  the  constituents  which  are  indi- 
vidually necessary ;  requisite  for  the  man,  that  is, 
not  in  their  vague,  broad  character,  but  in  their 
specialty  as  this  or  that  particular  thing.  But 
other  tracts  of  his  normal  self  are  filled  by  con- 
stituents necessary,  we  may  say,  no  more  than 
generically.  His  usual  life  gets  its  character,  that 
is,  from  a  large  number  of  details  which  are  variable 
within  limits.  His  habits  and  his  environment  have 
main  outlines  which  may  still  remain  the  same, 
though  within  these  the  special  features  have  been 
greatly  modified.  This  portion  of  the  man's  life  is 
necessary  to  make  him  his  average  self,  but,  if  the 
generic  type  is  preserved,  the  special  details  are 
accidental. 

This  is,  perhaps,  a  fair  account  of  the  man's  usual 
self,  but  it  is  obviously  no  solution  of  theoretical 
difficulties.  A  man's  true  self,  we  should  be  told, 
cannot  depend  on  his  relations  to  that  which  fluctu- 
ates. And  fluctuation  is  not  the  word;  for  in  the 
lifetime  of  a  man  there  are  irreparable  changes.  Is 
he  literally  not  the  same  man  if  loss,  or  death,  or 
love,  or  banishment  has  turned  the  current  of  his 
life?  And  yet,  when  we  look  at  the  facts,  and 
survey  the  man's  self  from  the  cradle  to  the  coffin, 
we  may  be  able  to  find  no  one  average.  The  usual 
self  of  one  period  is  not  the  usual  self  of  another, 
and  it  is  impossible  to  unite  in  one  mass  these  con- 
flicting psychical  contents.  Either  then  we  accept 
the  man's  mere  history  as  his  self,  and,  if  so,  why 
call  it  one  .■*  Or  we  confine  ourselves  to  periods, 
and  there  is  no  longer  any  single  self.  Or,  finally, 
we  must  distinguish  the  self  from  the  usual  con- 
stituents of  the  man's  psychical  being.  We  must 
try  to  reach  the  self  which  is  individual  by  finding 
the  self  which  is  essential. 


8o 


APPEARANCE. 


3,  Let  US  then  take,  as  before,  a  man's  mind,  and 
inspect  its  furniture  and  contents.  We  must  try  to 
find  that  part  of  them  in  which  the  self  really 
consists,  and  which  makes  it  one  and  not  another. 
And  here,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  we  can  get  no 
assistance  from  popular  ideas.  There  seems,  how- 
ever, no  doubt  that  the  inner  core  of  feeling,  resting 
mainly  on  what  is  called  Coenesthesia,  is  the  founda- 
tion of  the  self.' 

But  this  inner  nucleus,  in  the  first  place,  is  not 
separated  from  the  average  self  of  the  man  by  any 
line  that  can  be  drawn ;  and,  in  the  second  place, 
its  elements  come  from  a  variety  of  sources.  In 
some  cases  it  will  contain,  indivisibly  from  the  rest, 
relation  to  a  not-  self  of  a  certain  character.  Where 
an  individual  is  such  that  alteration  in  what  comes 
from  the  environment  completely  unsettles  him, 
where  this  change  may  produce  a  feeling  of  self- 
estrangement  so  severe  as  to  cause  sickness  and 
even  death,  we  must  admit  that  the  self  is  not 
enclosed  by  a  wall.  And  where  the  essential  self 
is  to  end,  and  the  accidental  self  to  begin,  seems  a 
riddle  without  an  answer. 

For  an  attempt  to  answer  it  is  baffled  by  a  fatal 
dilemma.  If  you  take  an  essence  which  can  change, 
it  is  not  an  essence  at  all ;  while,  if  you  stand  on 
anything  more  narrow,  the  self  has  disappeared. 
What  is  this  essence  of  the  self  which  never  is 
altered  .''  Infancy  and  old  age,  disease  and  madness, 
bring  new  features,  while  others  are  borne  away. 
It  is  hard  indeed  to  fix  any  limit  to  the  selPs 
mutability.  One  self,  doubtless,  can  sufler  change 
in  which  another  would  perish.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  there  comes  a  point  in  each  where  we  should 
agree    that    the    man    is    no  longer   himself     This 

'  I  may  refer  here  to  a  few  further  remarks  in  Mind,  12,  p.  368 
and  foil.  I  am  not  suggesting  that  ideas  may  not  form  part  of  the 
innermost  self.  One  thinks  here  naturally  of  the  strange  selves 
suggested  in  hypnotism. 


* 


THE    MEANINGS    OF    SELF. 


4H 


creature  lost  in  illusions,  bereft  of  memory,  trans- 
formed in  mood,  with  diseased  feelings  enthroned 
in  the  very  heart  of  his  being — is  this  still  one  self 
with  what  we  knew  ?  Well,  be  it  so,  assert,  what 
you  are  unable  to  show,  that  there  is  still  a  point 
untouched,  a  spot  which  never  has  been  invaded. 
I  will  not  ask  you  to  point  this  out,  for  I  am  sure 
that  is  impossible.  But  I  urge  upon  you  the 
opposite  side  of  the  dilemma.  This  narrow  per- 
sisting element  of  feeling  or  idea,  this  fixed  essence 
not  "  servile  to  all  the  skyey  influences,"  this 
wretched  fraction  and  poor  atom,  too  mean  to  be  in 
danger — do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  this  bare 
remnant  is  really  the  self  ?  The  supposition  is  pre- 
posterous, and  the  question  wants  no  answer.  If 
the  self  has  been  narrowed  to  a  point  which  does 
not  change,  that  point  is  less  than  the  real  self. 
But  anything  wider  has  a  "  complexion "  which 
"  shifts  to  strange  effects,"  and  therefore  cannot  be 
one  self.  The  riddle  has  proved  too  hard  for 
us. 

We  have  been  led  up  to  the  problem  of 
personal  identity,  and  any  one,  who  thinks  that  he 
knows  what  he  means  by  his  self,  may  be  invited 
to  solve  this.  To  my  mind  it  seems  insoluble, 
but  not  because  all  the  questions  asked  are  essen- 
tially such  questions  as  cannot  be  answered.  The 
true  cause  of  failure  lies  in  this — that  we  will  persist 
in  asking  questions  when  we  do  not  know  what 
they  mean,  and  when  their  meaning  perhaps  pre- 
supposes what  is  false.  In  inquiries  about  identity, 
as  we  saw  before  in  Chapter  viii.,  it  is  all-important 
to  be  sure  of  the  aspect  about  which  you  ask.  A 
thing  may  be  identical  or  different,  accordingly  as 
you  look  at  it.  Hence  in  personal  identity  the 
main  point  is  to  fix  the  meaning  of  person  ;  and  it 
is  chiefly  because  our  ideas  as  to  this  are  confused, 
that  we  are  unable  to  come  to  a  further  result. 

In    the   popular   view   a    man's    identity   resides 

A.  R.  G 


82 


APrEARAMCX. 


mainly  in  his  body.'  There,  before  we  reflect  much, 
lies  the  crucial  point.  Is  the  body  the  same  ?  Has 
it  existed  continuously  ?  If  there  is  no  doubt  about 
this,  then  the  man  is  the  same,  and  presumably  he 
has  preser\-ed  his  personal  identity,  whatever  else 
we  like  to  say  has  invaded  or  infected  iL  But,  of 
course,  as  we  have  seen,  this  identity  of  the  body 
is  itself  a  doubtful  problem  (p.  73).  And  even 
apart  from  that,  the  mere  oneness  of  the  organism 
must  be  allowed  to  be  a  very  crude  way  of  settling 
personal  sameness.  Few  of  us  would  venture  to 
maintain  that  the  self  is  the  body. 

Now.  if  we  add  the  requirement  of  psychitcU 
continuity,  have  we  ad\'anced  much  further .'  For 
obviously  it  is  not  known,  and  there  seems  hardly 
any  way  of  deciding,  whether  the  psychical  current 
is  without  any  break.  Apparently,  during  sleep  or 
otherwise,  such  intervals  are  at  least  possible  ;  and, 
if  so,  continuity',  being  doubtful,  cannot  be  used  to 
prove  identity.  And  further,  if  our  psychical  con- 
tents can  be  more  or  less  transformed,  the  mere 
absence  of  an  interval  will  hardly  be  thought  enough 
to  guarantee  sameness.  So  far  as  I  can  judge,  it  is 
usual,  for  (lersonal  identity,  to  require  both  con- 
tinuity and  qualitative  sameness.  But  how  much  of 
each  is  wanted,  and  how  the  two  stand  to  one 
another, — as  to  this  I  can  find  little  else  but  sheer 
confusion.     Let  us  examine  it  more  closely. 

We  should  perhaps  say  that  by  one  self  we  under- 
stand one  experience.  And  this  may  either  mean 
one  for  a  supposed  outside  observer,  or  one  for  the 
consciousness  of  the  self  in  question,  the  latter  kind 
of  unity  being  added  to  or  apart  from  the  first  kind. 
And  the  self  is  not  one  unless  within  limits  its 
quality  is  the  same.  But  we  have  already  seen  that 
if  the  individual  is  simply  viewed  from  outside,  it  is 
quite  impossible  to  find  a  limit  within  which  change 

'  In  the  Furlnii^htly  Revinu,  ccxxviii.,  p.  820,  I  have  further 
discussed  this  question. 


THE    MEANINGS    OF   SELF. 


H 


may  not  come,  and  which  yet  is  wide  enough  to 
embrace  a  real  self.  Hence,  if  the  test  is  only  same- 
ness for  an  outside  observer,  it  seems  clear  that 
sometimes  a  man's  life  must  have  a  series  of  selves. 
But  at  what  point  of  difference,  and  on  what  precise 
principle,  that  succession  takes  place  seems  not  de- 
finable. The  question  is  important,  but  the  decision, 
if  there  is  one,  appears  quite  arbitrary.  But  per- 
haps, if  we  quit  the  view  of  the  outside  observer,  we 
may  discover  some  principle.  Let  us  make  the 
attempt 

We  may  take  memory  as  the  criterion.  The  self, 
we  may  hold,  which  remembers  itself  is  so  far  one  ; 
and  in  this  lies  personal  identity.  We  perhaps  may 
wish  also  to  strengthen  our  case  by  regarding  memory 
as  something  entirely  by  itself,  and  as,  so  to  speak, 
capable  of  anything  whatever.  But  this  is,  of  course, 
quite  erroneous.  Memory,  as  a  special  application 
of  reproduction,  displays  no  exceptional  wonders  to  a 
sane  psychology,  nor  does  it  really  offer  greater  diffi- 
culties than  we  find  in  several  other  functions.  And 
the  point  I  would  emphasize  here  is  its  limits  and 
defects.  Whether  you  take  it  across  its  breadth,  or 
down  its  length,  you  discover  a  great  want  of 
singleness.  This  one  memory  of  which  we  talk  is 
very  weak  for  many  aspects  of  our  varied  life,  and 
is  again  disproportionately  strong  for  other  aspects. 
Hence  it  seems  more  like  a  bundle  of  memories  run- 
ning side  by  side  and  in  part  unconnected.  It  is 
certain  that  at  any  one  time  what  we  can  recall  is 
most  fragmentary.  There  are  whole  sides  of  our  life 
which  may  be  wanting  altogether,  and  others  which 
will  come  up  only  in  various  degrees  of  feebleness. 
This  is  when  memory  is  at  its  best ;  and  at  other 
times  there  hardly  seems  any  limit  to  its  failure. 
Not  only  may  some  threads  of  our  bundle  be  want- 
ing or  weak,  but,  out  of  those  that  remain,  certain 
lengths  may  be  missing.  Pieces  of  our  life,  when  we 
were  asleep,  or  drugged,  or  otherwise  distempered. 


ATT  E-UtAKCX. 


iAV 


are  not  represented.  Doubtless  the  current,  for  all 
that,  comes  to  us  as  ooatiniious.  But  so  it  does 
when  things  go  further,  and  when  in  present  disease 
our  recollection  becomes  partial  and  distorted.  Nay, 
when  in  one  single  man  diere  are  periodic  returns 
of  two  disconnected  memories,  the  faculty  still  keeps 
its  nature  and  proclaims  its  identity-.  And  psycho- 
logy explains  how  this  is  so*.  Memory  depends  on 
reproduction  from  a  basis  that  is  present — a  basis 
that  may  be  said  to  consist  in  self-feeling.  Hence,  so 
far  as  this  basis  remains  the  same  through  life,  it 
may,  to  speak  in  general,  recall  anything  once  as- 
sociated with  it  And,  as  this  basis  changes,  we 
can  understand  how  its  connections  with  past  events 
will  vary  indefinitely,  both  in  fulness  and  in  strength. 
Hence,  for  the  same  reason,  when  self- feeling  has 
been  altered  beyond  a  limit  not  in  general  to  be 
'defined,  the  base  required  for  reproduction  of  our 

'  past  is  removed.  And,  as  these  different  bases 
alternate,  our  past  life  will  come  to  us  differently, 
not  as  one  self,  but  as  diverse  selves  alternately. 
And  of  course  these  "  reproduced  "  selves  may,  to  a 

(  very  considerable  extent,  have  never  existed  in  the 
past' 

Now  I  would  invite  the  person,  who  takes  his 
sameness  to  consist  in  bare  memory,  to  confront  his 
view  with  these  facts,  and  to  show  us  how  he  under- 
stands them.  For  apparently,  though  he  may  not 
admit  that  personal  identity  has  degrees,  he  at  least 
cannot  deny  that  in  one  life  we  are  able  to  have 
more  than  one  self.  And,  further,  he  may  be  com- 
pelled to  embrace  self-sameness  with  a  past  which 
exists,  for  him  only  sometimes,  and  for  others  not  at 
all.  And  under  these  conditions  it  is  not  easy  to 
see  what  becomes  of  the  self.  I  will,  however,  go 
further.  It  is  well  known  that  after  an  injury  fol- 
d  by  unconsciousness  which  is  removed  by  an 
ion,  our  mental  life  may  begin  again  from  the 
tpare  here  once  again  the  suggested  selves  of  hypnotism. 


THE    MEANINGS   OF   SELF. 


85 


moment  of  the  injury.  Now  if  the  self  remembers 
because  and  according  as  it  is  now,  misfht  not 
another  self  be  made  of  a  quality  the  same,  and 
hence  possessing  the  same  past  in  present  recollec- 
tion ?  And  if  one  could  be  made  thus,  why  not  also 
two  or  three  ?  These  might  be  made  distinct  at  the 
present  time,  through  their  differing  quality,  and 
again  through  outward  relations,  and  yet  be  like 
enough  for  each  to  remember  the  same  past,  and  so, 
of  course,  to  be  the  same.  Nor  do  I  see  how  this 
supposition  is  to  be  rejected  as  theoretically  impos- 
sible. And  it  may  help  us  to  perceive,  what  was 
evident  before,  that  a  self  is  not  thought  to  be  the 
same  because  of  bare  memory,  but  only  so  when 
that  memory  is  considered  not  to  be  deceptive. 
But  this  admits  that  identity  must  depend  in  the  end 
upon  past  existence,  and  not  solely  upon  mere  pre- 
sent thinking.  And  continuity  in  some  degree,  and 
in  some  unintelligible  sense,  is  by  the  popular  view 
required  for  personal  identity.  He  who  is  risen 
from  the  dead  may  really  be  the  same,  though  we 
can  say  nothing  intelligible  of  his  ambiguous  eclipse 
or  his  phase  of  half-existence.  But  a  man  wholly 
like  the  first,  but  created  fresh  after  the  same  lapse 
of  time,  we  might  feel  was  too  much  to  be  one,  if 
not  quite  enough  to  make  two.  Thus  it  is  evident 
that,  for  persona!  identity,  some  continuity  is  requi- 
site, but  how  much  no  one  seems  to  know.  In  fact, 
if  we  are  not  satisfied  with  vague  phrases  and  mean- 
ingless generalities,  we  soon  discover  that  the  best 
way  is  not  to  ask  questions.  But  if  we  persist,  we 
are  likely  to  be  left  with  this  result.  Personal  iden- 
tity is  mainly  a  matter  of  degree.  The  question  has 
a  meaning,  if  confined  to  certain  aspects  of  the  self, 
though  even  here  it  can  be  made  definite  in  each 
case  only  by  the  arbitrary  selection  of  points  of  view. 
And  in  each  case  there  will  be  a  limit  fixed  in  the 
end  by  no  clear  principle.  But  in  what  the.  general 
sameness  of  one  self  consists  is  a  problem  insoluble 


sf. 


IjX^ 


86 


APPEARANCE. 


because  it  is  meaningless.  This  question,  I  repeat 
it,  is  sheer  nonsense  until  we  have  got  some  clear 
idea  as  to  what  the  self  is  to  stand  for.  If  you  ask 
me  whether  a  man  is  identical  in  this  or  that  respect, 
and  for  one  purpose  or  another  purpose,  then,  if 
we  do  not  understand  one  another,  we  are  on  the 
road  to  an  understanding.  In  my  opinion,  even 
then  we  shall  reach  our  end  only  by  more  or  less  of 
convention  and  arrangement  But  to  seek  an  answer 
in  general  to  the  question  asked  at  large  is  to  pur- 
sue a  chimera. 

We  have  seen,  so  far,  that  the  self  has  no  definite 
meaning.  It  was  hardly  one  section  of  the  indi- 
vidual's contents  ;  nor  was  it  even  such  a  section,  if 
reduced  to  what  is  usual  and  taken  somehow  at  an 
average.  The  self  appeared  to  be  the  essential  por- 
tion or  function,  but  in  what  that  essence  lies  no  one 
really  seemed  to  know.  We  could  find  nothing  but 
opinions  inconsistent  with  each  other,  not  one  of 
which  would  presumably  be  held  by  any  one  man,  if 
he  were  forced  to  realize  its  meaning. 

(4)  By  selecting  from  the  individual's  contents,  or 
by  accepting  them  in  the  gross,  we  have  failed  to 
find  the  self.  We  may  hence  be  induced  to  locate 
it  in  some  kind  of  monad,  or  supposed  simple  being. 
By  this  device  awkward  questions,  as  to  diversity 
and  sameness,  seem  fairly  to  be  shelved.  The  unity 
exists  as  an  unit,  and  in  some  sphere  presumably 
secure  from  chance  and  from  change.  I  will  here 
first  refer  to  our  result  which  turned  out  adverse  to 
the  possibility  of  any  such  being  (Chapters  iii.  and 
v.).  And  1  will  then  go  on  to  point  out  in  a  few 
words  that  its  nature  is  most  ambiguous.  Is  it  the 
self  at  all,  and,  if  so,  to  what  extent  and  in  what 
sense  ? 

If  we  make  this  unit  something  moving  parallel 
with  the  life  of  a  man,  or,  rather,  something  not  mov- 
ing, but  literally  standing  in  relation  to  his  successive 


THE    MEANINGS    OF    SELF. 


87 


variety,  this  will  not  give  us  much  help.  It  will  be 
the  man's  self  about  as  much  as  is  his  star  {if  he  has 
one),  which  looks  down  from  above  and  cares  not 
when  ite  perishes.  And  if  the  unit  is  brought  down 
into  the  life  of  the  person,  and  so  in  any  sense  suffers 
his  fortunes,  then  in  what  sense  does  it  remain  any 
longer  an  unit .''  And  if  we  will  but  look  at  the  ques- 
tion, we  are  forced  to  this  conclusion.  If  we  knew 
already  what  we  meant  by  the  self,  and  could  point 
out  its  existence,  then  our  monad  might  be  offered 
as  a  theory  to  account  for  that  self.  It  would  be  an 
indefensible  theory,  but  at  least  respectable  as  being 
an  attempt  to  explain  something.  But,  so  long  as 
we  have  no  clear  view  as  to  the  limits  in  actual  fact 
of  the  selfs  existence,  our  monad  leaves  us  with  alt 
our  old  confusion  and  obscurity.  But  it  further 
loads  us  with  the  problem  of  its  connection  with 
these  facts  about  which  we  are  so  ignorant.  What 
1  mean  is  simply  this.  Suppose  you  have  accepted 
the  view  that  self  consists  in  recollection,  and  then 
offer  me  one  monad,  or  two  or  three,  or  as  many  as 
you  think  the  facts  call  for,  in  order  to  account  for 
recollection.  I  think  your  theory  worthless,  but,  to 
some  extent,  I  respect  it,  because  at  least  it  has 
taken  up  some  fact,  and  is  trying  to  account  for  it. 
But  if  you  offer  me  a  vague  mass,  and  then  an  unit 
alongside,  and  tell  me  that  the  second  is  the  self  of 
the  first,  I  do  not  think  that  you  are  saying  any- 
thing. All  I  see  is  that  you  are  drifting  towards 
this  dilemma.  If  the  monad  owns  the  whole  diver- 
sity, or  any  selected  part  of  the  diversity,  which  we 
find  in  the  individual,  then,  even  if  you  had  found 
in  this  the  identity  of  the  self,  you  would  have  to 
reconcile  it  all  with  the  simplicity  of  the  monad. 
But  if  the  monad  stands  aloof,  either  with  no 
character  at  all  or  a  private  character  apart,  then  it 
may  be  a  fine  thing  in  itself,  but  it  is  mere  mockery 
to  call  it  the  self  of  a  man.  And,  with  so  much  for 
the  present,  I  will  pass  away  from  this  point 


88 


ATPEARAMCE. 


(5)  It  may  be  suggested  that  the  self  is  the  matter 
in  which  I  take  personal  interest.  The  elements 
felt  as  mine  may  be  regarded  as  the  self,  or,  at  all 
events,  as  all  the  self  which  exists.  And  interest 
consists  mainly,  though  not  wholly,  in  pain  and  plea- 
sure. The  self  will  be  therefore  that  group  of  feel- 
ings which,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  is  constantly 
present,  and  which  is  always  attended  by  pleasure 
or  pain.  And  whatever  from  time  to  time  is  united 
with  this  group,  is  a  personal  affair  and  becomes 
pari  of  sell.  This  general  view  may  serve  to  lead 
us  to  a  fresh  way  of  taking  self;  but  it  obviously 
promises  very  little  result  for  metaphysics.  For  the 
t ontcnts  of  self  are  most  variable  from  one  time  to 
anolhrr.  and  are  largely  conflicting ;  and  they  are 
drawn  froni  many  heterogeneous  sources.  In  fact,  if 
the  sell  nteans  merely  what  interests  us  personally, 
ihru  at  any  one  time  it  is  likely  to  be  too  wide,  and 
perhaps  also  to  be  loo  narrow  ;  and  at  different 
times  it  seems  quite  at  variance  with  itself. 

(0)  We  are  now  brought  naturally  to  a  most  im- 
poi'lant  way  of  understanding  the  self.  We  have, 
up  to  the  present,  ignored  the  distinction  of  subject 
and  object.  We  have  n\ade  a  start  from  the  whole 
psychical  individual,  and  have  tried  to  find  the  self 
there  or  in  connection  with  that.  But  this  individual, 
we  saw,  contained  both  object  and  subject,  both  not- 
Hclf  unvl  self.  At  least,  the  not-self  must  clearly  be 
allowevi  to  Ix;  in  it,  so  far  as  that  enters  into  relation 
with  ihc  self  and  apjH'ars  as  an  object.  The  reader 
inuy  prefer  another  lorm  of  expression,  but  he  must, 
I  think,  agree  as  to  the  fact  If  you  take  what  in 
the  widest  Kcnse  is  inside  a  man's  mind,  you  will 
finvl  there  Innh  subject  and  object  and  their  relation. 
This  will,  rtl  all  events,  l)e  the  case  both  in  percep- 
tion Miul  thought,  and  ag2\in  in  desire  and  volition. 
And  this  srll,  which  is  opiKtsed  to  the  not-self,  will 
nuMt  entphatkcMlly  not  ctiincidc  with  the  self,  if  that 


THE    MEANINGS    OF   SELF. 


89 


is  taken  as  the  individual  or  the  essential  individual. 
The  deplorable  confusion,  which  is  too  prevalent  on 
this  head,  compels  me  to  invite  the  reader's  special 
attention. 

The  psychical  division  of  the  soul  into  subject  and 
object  has,  as  is  well  known,  two  main  forms.  The 
relation  of  the  self  to  the  not-self  is  theoretical  and 
practical.  In  the  first  we  have,  generally,  perception 
or  intelligence  ;  in  the  second  we  have  desire  and  will. 
It  is  impossible  for  me  here  to  point  out  the  distinct 
nature  of  each ;  and  still  less  can  I  say  anything  on 
their  development  from  one  root.  What  seems 
to  me  certain  is  that  both  these  forms  of  relation 
are  secondary  products.  Every  soul  either  exists 
or  has  existed  at  a  stage  where  there  was  no  self 
and  no  not- self,  neither  Ego  nor  object  in  any  sense 
whatever.  But  in  what  way  thought  and  will  have 
emerged  from  this  basis — this  whole  of  feeling  given 
without  relation — I  cannot  here  discuss.'  Nor  is 
the  discussiolJ  necessary  to  an  understanding  of 
the  crucial  point  here.  /That  point  turns  upon  the 
contents  of  the  self  and  the  not-self;  and  we  may 
consider  these  apart  from  the  question  of  origin. 

Now  that  subject  and  object  have  contents  and 
are  actual  psychical  groups  appears  to  me  evident. 
I  am  aware  that  too  often  writers  speak  of  the  Ego 
as  of  something  not  essentially  qualified  by  this  or 
that  psychical  matter.  And  1  do  not  deny  that  in  a 
certain  use  that  language  might  be  defended.  But  if 
we  consider,  as  we  are  considering  here,  what  we  are 
to  understand  by  that  object  and  subject  in  relation, 
which  at  a  given  time  we  find  existing  in  a  soul,  the 
case  is  quite  altered.  The  Ego  that  pretends  to  be 
anything  either  before  or  beyond  its  concrete  psychical 
filling,  is  a  gross  fiction  and  mere  monster,  and  for 
no  purpose  admissible.       And  the  question  surely 

'  On  this  and  other  kindred  points,  compare  my  articles  in 
Mindy  Nos.  47  and   49.     .\nd  see   below  (Chapters  xix.,   xxvi., 

xxvii). 


90 


APPEARANCE. 


may  be  settled  by  observation.  Take  any  case  of 
perception,  or  whatever  you  please,  where  this  rela- 
tion of  object  to  subject  is  found  as  a  fact.  There, 
I  presume,  no  one  will  deny  that  the  object,  at  all 
events,  is  a  concrete  phenomenon.  It  has  a  char- 
acter which  exists  as,  or  in,  a  mental  fact  And,  if 
we  turn  from  this  to  the  subject,  is  there  any  more 
cause  for  doubt  ?  Surely  in  every  case  that  con- 
tains a  mass  of  feeling,  if  not  also  of  other  psychical 
existence.  When  I  see,  or  perceive,  or  understand, 
I  (my  term  of  the  relation)  am  palpably,  and  perhaps 
even  painfully,  concrete.  And  when  I  will  or  desire, 
it  surely  is  ridiculous  to  take  the  self  as  not  qualified 
by  particular  psychical  fact  Evidently  any  self 
which  we  can  find  is  some  concrete  form  of  unity  of 
psychical  existence.  And  whoever  wishes  to  intro- 
duce it  as  something  (now  or  at  any  time)  apart  or 
beyond,  clearly  does  not  rest  his  case  upon  observa- 
tion. He  is  importing  into  the  facts  a  metaphysical 
chimera,  which,  in  no  sense  existing,  can  do  no  work  ; 
and  which,  even  if  it  existed,  would  be  worse  than 
useless. 

The  self  and  not-self,  as  discoverable,  are  concrete 
groups,'  and  the  question  is  as  to  the  content  of  these. 
What  is  that  content,  if  any,  which  is  essentially  not- 
self  or  self  ?  Perhaps  the  best  way  of  beginning  this 
inquiry  is  to  ask  whether  there  is  anytkinfr  which 
may  not  become  an  object  and,  in  that  sense,  a  not- 
self.  We  certainly  seem  able  to  set  everything  over 
against  ourselves.  We  begin  from  the  outside,  but 
the  distinguishing  process  becomes  more  inward, 
until  it  ends  with  deliberate  and  conscious  intro- 
spection. Here  we  attempt  to  set  before,  and  so 
opposite  to,  self  our  most  intimate  features.  We 
cannot  do  this  with  all  at  any  one  time,  but  with 
practice  and  labour  one  detail  after  another  is  de- 
tached from  the  felt  background  and  brought  before 

'  I  am  not  saying  that  the  whole  soul  is  divided  into  two  groups. 
That  is  really  not  possible.     See  more  below. 


THE    MEANINGS   OF   SELF. 


91 


our  view.  It  is  far  from  certain  that  at  some  one 
time  et'ery  feature  of  the  self  has,  sooner  or  later, 
taken  its  place  in  the  not-self.  But  it  is  quite  certain 
that  this  holds  of  by  far  the  larger  part.  And  we 
are  hence  compelled  to  admit  that  very  little  -of  the 
self  can  belong  to  it  essentially.  Let  us  now  turn 
from  the  theoretical  to  the  practical  relation.  Is 
there  here  anything,  let  us  ask,  which  is  incapable  of 
becoming  an  object  to  my  will  or  desire  .''  But  what 
becomes  such  an  object  is  clearly  a  not-self  and 
opposed  to  the  self.  Let  us  go  at  once  to  the  region 
that  seems  most  internal  and  inalienable.  As  intro- 
spection discloses  this  or  that  feature  in  ourselves, 
can  we  not  wish  that  it  were  otherwise  .'*  May  not 
everything  that  we  find  within  us  be  felt  as  a  limit 
and  as  a  not-self,  against  which  we  either  do,  or  con- 
ceivably might,  react.  Take,  for  instance,  some 
slight  pain.  We  may  have  been  feeling,  in  our 
dimmest  and  most  inward  recesses,  uneasy  and  dis- 
composed ;  and,  so  soon  as  this  disturbing  feature  is 
able  to  be  noticed,  we  at  once  react  against  it.  The 
disquieting  sensation  becomes  clearly  a  not-self,  which 
we  desire  to  remove.  And,  I  think,  we  must  accept 
the  result  that,  if  not  everything  may  become  at 
times  a  practical  not-self,  it  is  at  least  hard  to  find 
exceptions 

Let  us  now,  passing  to  the  other  side  of  both  these 
relations,  ask  if  the  not-self  contains  anything  which 
belongs  to  it  exclusively.  It  will  not  be  easy  to  dis- 
cover many  such  elements.  In  the  theoretical  rela- 
tion it  is  quite  clear  that  not  everything  can  be  an 
object,  all  together  and  at  once.  At  any  one  moment 
that  which  is  in  any  sense  before  me  must  be  limited. 
What  are  we  to  say  then  becomes  of  that  remainder 
of  the  not-self  which  clearly  has  not,  even  for  the 
time,  passed  wholly  from  my  mind  .''  I  do  not  mean 
those  features  of  the  environment  to  which  I  fail  to 
attend  specially,  but  which  I  still  go  on  perceiving 
as  something  before   me.     I    refer  to   the  features 


9» 


APPEARANCE. 


V 


I 


•1: 


which  have  now  sunk  below  this  level.  These  are 
not  even  a  setting  or  a  fringe  to  the  object  of  my 
mind.  They  have  passed  lower  into  the  general 
background  of  feeling,  from  which  that  distinct  ob- 
ject with  its  indistinct  setting  is  detached.  But  this 
means  that  for  the  time  they  have  passed  into  the 
self  A  constant  sound  will  afford  us  a  very  good 
instance.'  That  may  be  made  into  the  principal 
object  of  my  mind,  or  it  may  be  an  accompaniment 
of  that  object  more  or  less  definite.  But  there  is  a 
further  stage,  where  you  cannot  say  that  the  sensa- 
tion has  ceased,  and  where  yet  it  is  no  feature  in 
what  comes  as  the  not-self.  It  has  become  now  one 
among  the  many  elements  of  my  feeling,  and  it  has 
passed  into  that  self  for  which  the  not-self  exists.  I 
will  not  ask  if  with  any,  or  with  what,  portions  of  the 
not-self  this  relapse  may  be  impossible,  for  it  is 
enough  that  it  should  be  possible  with  a  very  great 
deal.  Let  us  go  on  to  look  at  the  same  thing  from 
the  practical  side.  There  it  will  surely  be  very 
difficult  to  fix  on  elements  which  essentially  must 
confront  and  limit  me.  There  are  some  to  which  in 
fact  I  seem  never  to  be  practically  related  ;  and 
there  are  others  which  are  the  object  of  my  will  or 
desire  only  from  occasion  to  occasion.  And  if  we 
cannot  find  anything  which  is  essential  to  the  not- 
self,  then  everything,  it  would  appear,  so  far  as  it 
enters  my  mind,  may  form  part  of  the  felt  mass. 
But  if  so,  it  would  seem  for  the  time  to  be  connected 
with  that  group  against  which  the  object  of  will 
comes.  And  thus  once  again  the  not-self  has  be- 
come self. 

The  reader  may  have  observed  one  point  on  which 
my  language  has  been  guarded.  That  point  is  the 
extreme  limit  of  this  interchange  of  content  between 
the  not-self  and  the  self.  I  do  not  for  one  moment 
deny  the  existence  of  that   limit.      In   my  opinion  it 

'  Another   instance    would   be  the  sensations    from   my   own 
clothes. 


THE    MEANINGS   OF   SELF. 


93 


is  not  only  possible,  but  most  probable,  that  in  every 
man  there  are  elements  in  the  internal  felt  core 
which  are  never  made  objects,  and  which  practically 
cannot  be.  There  may  well  be  features  in  our 
Ccenesthesia  which  lie  so  deep  that  we  never  succeed 
in  detaching  them  ;  and  these  cannot  properly  be 
said  to  be  ever  our  not-self.  Even  in  the  past  we 
cannot  distinguish  their  speciality.  But  I  presume 
that  even  here  the  obstacle  may  be  said  to  be  prac- 
tical, and  to  consist  in  the  obscurity,  and  not  other- 
wise in  the  essence,  of  these  sensations.'  And  I  will 
barely  notice  the  assertion  that  pleasure  and  pain 
are  essentially  not  capable  of  being  objects.  This 
assertion  seems  produced  by  the  straits  of  theory, 
is  devoid  of  all  basis  in  fact,  and  may  be  ignored. 
But  our  reason  for  believing  in  elements  which 
never  are  a  not-self  is  the  fact  of  a  felt  surplus  in 
our  undistinguished  core.  What  I  mean  is  this  : 
we  are  able  in  our  internal  mass  of  feeling  to  distin- 
gfuish  and  to  recognise  a  number  of  elements ;  and 
we  are  able,  on  the  other  side,  to  decide  that  our 
feeling  contains  beyond  these  an  unexhausted  mar- 
gin.' It  contains  a  margin  which,  in  its  general  idea 
of  margin,  can  be  made  an  object,  but  which,  in  its 
particularity,  cannot  be.  But  from  time  to  time  this 
margin  has  been  encroached  upon  ;  and  we  have  not 
the  smallest  reason  to  suppose  that  at  some  point  in 
its  nature  lies  a  hard  and  fast  limit  to  the  invasion 
of  the  not-self 


'  Notice  that  our  emotional  moods,  where  we  hardly  could 
analyse  thera,  may  qualify  objects  aesthetically. 

*  How  the  existence  of  this  margin  is  observed  is  a  question  I 
cannot  discuss  here.  The  main  point  lies  in  our  ability  to  feel  a 
discrepancy  between  our  felt  self  and  any  object  before  it.  This, 
reflected  on  and  made  an  object — as,  of  course,  in  its  main  vague 
type  is  always  possible  with  past  feeling — gives  us  the  idea  of  an 
unreduced  residue.  The  same  ability  to  feel  discrepancy  is  the 
ground  of  our  belief  as  to  difference  or  identity  between  past  and 
present  feeling.  But  the  detail  of  this  discussion  does  not  belong 
to  metaphysics. 


94 


APPEARANCE. 


On  the  side  of  the  not-self,  once  more,  I  would 
not  assert  that  every  feature  of  content  may  lapse 
into  mere  feeling,  and  so  fuse  itself  with  the  back- 
ground. There  may  be  features  which  practically 
manage  never  to  do  this.  And,  again,  it  may  be 
urged  that  there  are  thought-products  not  capable  ol 
existence,  save  when  noticed  in  such  a  way  as  must 
imply  opposition  to  self.  I  will  not  controvert  this ; 
but  will  suggest  only  that  it  might  open  a  question, 
as  to  the  existence  in  general  of  thought-products 
within  the  feeling  self,  which  might  further  bewilder 
us.  1  will  come  to  the  conclusion,  and  content 
myself  with  urging  the  general  result.  Both  on  the 
side  of  the  self  and  on  the  side  of  the  not-self,  there 
are,  if  you  please,  admitted  to  be  features  not  capable 
of  translocation.  But  the  amount  of  these  will  be  so 
small  as  to  be  incapable  of  characterizing  and  con- 
stituting the  self  or  the  not-self  The  main  bulk  of 
the  elements  on  each  side  is  interchangeable. 

If  at  this  point  we  inquire  whether  the  present 
meaning  of  self  will  coincide  with  those  we  had  be- 
fore, the  answer  is  not  doubtful,  for  clearly  well- 
nigh  everything  contained  in  the  psychical  individual 
may  be  at  one  time  part  of  self  and  at  another  time 
part  of  not-self  Nor  would  it  be  possible  to  find 
an  essence  of  the  man  which  was  incapable  of  being 
opposed  to  the  self,  as  an  object  for  thought  and  for 
will.  At  least,  if  found,  that  essence  would  consist 
in  a  residue  so  narrow  as  assuredly  to  be  insufficient 
for  making  an  individual.  And  it  could  gain  con- 
creteness  only  by  receiving  into  its  character  a 
mortal  inconsistency.  The  mere  instance  of  in- 
ternal volition  should  by  itself  be  enough  to  compel 
reflection.  There  you  may  take  your  self  as  deep- 
lying  and  as  inward  as  you  please,  and  may  narrow 
it  to  the  centre ;  yet  these  contents  may  be  placed 
in  opposition  to  your  self,  and  you  may  desire  their 
alteration.  And  here  surely  there  is  an  end  of  any 
absolute  confinement  or  exclusive  location  of  the  self. 


THE    MEANINGS    OF   SELF. 


95 


For  the  self  is  at  one  moment  the  whole  individual, 
inside  which  the  opposites  and  their  tension  is  con- 
tained ;  and,  again,  it  is  one  opposite,  limited  by  and 
struggling  against  an  opponent. 

And  the  fact  of  the  matter  seems  this.  The 
whole  psychical  mass,  which  fills  the  soul  at  any  mo- 
ment, is  the  self  so  far  as  this  mass  is  only  felt  So 
far,  that  is,  as  the  mass  is  given  together  in  one 
whole,  and  not  divisible  from  the  group  which  is 
especially  connected  with  pleasure  and  pain,  this 
entire  whole  is  felt  as  self.  But,  on  the  other  side, 
elements  of  content  are  distinguished  from  the  mass, 
which  therefore  is,  so  far,  the  background  against 
which  perception  takes  place.  But  this  relation  of 
not-self  to  self  does  not  destroy  the  old  entire  self. 
This  is  still  the  whole  mass  inside  which  the  dis- 
tinction and  the  relation  falls.  And  self  in  these 
two  meanings  coexists  with  itself,  though  it  certain- 
ly does  not  coincide.  Further,  in  the  practical 
relation  a  new  feature  becomes  visible.  There  we 
have,  first  of  all,  self  as  the  whole  felt  condition. 
We  have,  next,  the  not-self  which  is  felt  as  opposing 
the  self.  We  have,  further,  the  group,  which  is  limi- 
ted and  struggles  to  expand,  so  causing  the  tension. 
This  is,  of  course,  felt  specially  as  the  self  and  with- 
in this  there  falls  a  new  feature  worth  noticing.  In 
desire  and  volition  we  have  an  idea  held  against 
the  existing  not-self,  the  idea  being  that  of  a  change 
in  that  not-self.  This  idea  not  only  is  felt  to  be  a 
part  of  that  self  which  is  opposed  to  the  not-self, — 
it  is  felt  also  to  be  the  main  feature  and  the  pro- 
minent element  there.  Thus  we  say  of  a  man  that 
his  whole  self  was  centred  in  a  certain  particular 
end.  This  means,  to  speak  psychologically,  that 
the  idea  is  one  whole  with  the  inner  group  which 
is  repressed  by  the  not  self,  and  that  the  tension  is 
felt  emphatically  in  the  region  of  the  idea.  The 
idea  becomes  thus  the  prominent  feature  in  the  con- 
tent of  self.     And  hence  its  expansion   against,  or 


96 


APPEARANCE. 


contraction  by,  the  actual  group  of  the  not-self  is 
felt  as  the  enlargement  or  the  restraint  of  myself. 
Here,  if  the  reader  will  call  to  mind  that  the  exist- 
ing not-self  may  be  an  internal  state,  whose  alteration 
is  desired, — and,  again,  if  he  will  reflect  that  the  idea, 
viewed  theoretically,  itself  is  a  not-self, — he  may 
realize  the  entire  absence  of  a  qualification  attached 
to,  and  indivisible  from,  one  special  content 

We  have  yet  to  notice  even  another  meaning 
which  is  given  to  "self."  But  I  must  first  attempt 
at  this  point  to  throw  further  light  on  the  subject  of 
our  seventh  chapter.  The  perception  by  the  self 
of  its  own  activity  is  a  corner  of  psychology  which 
is  dangerous  if  left  in  darkness.  We  shall  realize 
this  danger  in  our  next  chapter  ;  and  I  will  attempt 
here  to  cut  the  ground  from  beneath  some  blind 
prejudices.  My  failure,  if  I  fail,  will  not  logically 
justify  their  existence.  It  may  doubtless  be  used  in 
their  excuse,  but  I  am  forced  to  run  that  risk  for 
the  sake  of  the  result. 

The  perception  of  activity  comes  from  the  expan- 
sion of  the  self  against  the  not-self,  this  expansion 
arising  from  the  self  And  by  the  self  is  not  meant 
the  whole  contents  of  the  individual,  but  one  term 
of  the  practical  relation  described  above.  We  saw 
there  how  an  idea,  over  against  the  not-self,  was 
the  feature  with  which  the  self-group  was  most  iden- 
tified. And  by  the  realization  of  this  idea  the  self 
therefore  is  expanded  ;  and  the  expansion,  as  suc/t,^ 
is  always  a  cause  of  pleasure.  The  mere  expansion, 
of  course,  would  not  be  felt  as  activity,  and  its  origi- 


'  I  may  refer  the  reader  hereto  Mind,  43,  pp.  119-320;  47,  pp. 
371-372;  and  49,  p.  33.  I  have  not  answered  Mr.  Ward's  criticisms 
{Atinii  48,  pp.  572-575)  in  detail,  because  in  my  opinion  they  are 
mere  misunderstandings,  the  removal  of  which  is  not  properly 
my  concern. 

*  For  a  further  distinction  on  this  point  see  Mind,  49,  pp.  6 
and  foil. 


TlIK    MEANINGS   OF    SELF. 


97 


nation  from  within  the  self  is  of  the  essence  of  the 
matter. 

But  tliere  are  several  points  necessary  for  the 
comprehension  of  this  view.  f.  The  reader  must 
understand,  first  of  all,  that  the  expansion  is  not 
necessarily  the  enlargement  of  the  self  in  the  sense 
of  the  whole  individual.  Nor  is  it  even  the  enlarge- 
ment of  the  self  as  against  the  not-self,  in  every 
meaning  of  those  terms.  It  is  the  expansion  of  the 
self  so  far  as  that  is  identified  with  the  idea  of  the 
change.  If,  for  example,  I  wished  to  produce  self- 
contraction,  then  that  also  would  be  enlargement 
■because  in  it  the  idea,  before  limited  by  the  fact  of 
a  greater  area,  would  transcend  that  limit.  Thus 
even  self-destruction  is  relative  expansion,  so  long 
as  the  activity  lasts.  And  Wvi  may  say,  generally, 
the  self  here  is  that  in  which  it  feels  its  chief  interest 
For  this  is  both  indivisible  from  and  prominent  in 
its  inmost  being.  No  one  who  misses  this  point 
can  understand  what  activity  means. 

2.  This  leads  us  to  a  difficulty.  For  sometimes 
clearly  I  am  active,  where  there  is  no  idea  proper, 
and,  it  might  be  added,  even  no  limiting  not-self. 
I  will  take  the  last  point  first,  {a)  Let  us^  for  argu- 
ment's sake,  imagine  a  case  where,  with  no  outside 
Other.and  noconsciousness  of  an  emptyenvironment, 
the  self  feels  expansion.  In  what  .sense  can  we  dis- 
cover any  not-self  here  .■*  The  answer  is  simple. 
The  self,  as  existing,  is  that  limit  to  itself  which  it 
transcends  by  activity.  Let  us  call  the  self,  as  it  is 
before  the  activity.  A,  and,  while  active,  A/J.  But 
we  have  a  third  feature,  the  inner  nature  of  A,  which 
emerges  in  AB,  This,  as  we  saw,  is  the  idea  of 
the  change,  and  we  may  hence  write  it  d.  We 
have,  therefore,  at  the  beginning  not  merely  A,  but 
in  addition  .-/  qualified  by  d ;  and  these  are  opposite 
to  one  another.  The  unqualified  A  is  the  not-self 
of  ^-^  as  identified  with  d;  and  the  tension  between 
Ad    and   A   is    the   inner   source   of    the  cliange, 

A.  R.  II 


98 


APPEARANCE. 


which,  of  course,  expands  b  to  B,  and  by  consequence, 
so  far,  A.  We  may.  if  we  hi<e  these  phrases,  call 
activity  the  ideaHty  of  a  thing  carrying  the  thing  be- 
yond its  actual  limit.  But  what  is  really  important 
is  the  recognition  that  activity  has  no  meaning,  un- 
less in  some  sense  we  suppose  an  idea  of  the  change  ; 
and  that,  as  against  this  idea  in  which  the  self  feels 
its  interest,  the  actual  condition  of  the  self  is  a  not- 
self  {b)  And  this,  of  course,  opens  a  problem.  For 
in  some  cases  where  the  self  apprehends  itself  as 
active,  there  seems  to  be  no  discoverable  idea.  But 
the  problem  is  solved  by  tlie  distinction  between  an 
idea  which  is  explicit  and  an  idea  not  explicit.  The 
latter  is  ideal  solely  in  the  sense  that  its  content  is 
used  beyond  its  existence.'  It  might  indeed  be  ar- 
gued that,  when  we  predicate  activity,  the  end  is 
always  transferred  in  idea  to  the  beginning.  That 
is  doubtle.ss  true ;  but.  when  activity  is  merely  felt, 
there  will  never  be  there  an  explicit  idea.  And,  in 
the  absence;  of  this,  1  will  try  to  explain  what  takes 
place.  We  have  first  a  self  which,  as  it  exists,  may 
be  called  Ac.  This  self  becomes  Acd,  and.  is  there- 
fore expanded.  But  bare  expandedness  is,  of  course, 
by  itself  not  activity,  and  could  not  be  so  felt.  And 
the  mere  alteration  consequently,  of  Ac  to  Acd, 
would  be  felt  only  as  a  change,  and  as  an  addition 
made  to  the  identical  A.  When  these  differences, 
c  and  d,  are  connected  before  the  mind  by  the  iden- 
tical A — and  for  the  perception  of  change  they  must 
be  connected — -there  is,  so  far,  no  action  or  passiv- 
ity, but  a  mere  change  which  happens.  This  is  not 
enough  for  activity,  since  we  require  also  the  idea 
of  d  in  Ac  ;  and  this  idea  we  do  not  have  in  an  ex- 
plicit form.  Hut  what,  I  think,  suffices  is  this.  Ac, 
which  as  a  fact  passes  into  Acd,  and  is  felt  so  to 
pass  by  the  perception  of  a  relation  of  sequence,  is 
also  previously  felt  as  Acd.      That  is,  in  the   A, 


jUind,  49,  p,  23.     And  see  below,  Chapter  xv. 


•I'iri:    MEANINGS   OF  SELF. 


99 


apart  from  ami  before  its  actual  change  to  d,  we 
have  the  qualification  Aid  wavering  and  strugglinpf 
aofainst  Ac.  Ac  suorcrests  Acd,  which  is  felt  as  one 
with  it,  and  not  as  given  to  it  by  anything  else.  But 
this  suggestion  Acd,  as  soon  as  it  arises,  is  checked 
by  the  negative,  mere  Ac,  which  maintains  its  posi- 
tion. A  is  therefore  the  site  of  a  struggle  of  Acd 
against  Ac.  Each  is  felt  in  A  as  belonging  to  it  and 
therefore  as  one  ;  and  there  is  no  relation  yet  which 
serves  as  the  solution  of  this  discrepancy.  Hence 
comes  the  feeling  that  -  /  is,  and  yet  is  not,  Acd. 
But  when  the  relation  of  sequence  seems  to  solve 
this  contradiction,  then  the  ensuing  result  is  not  felt 
as  mere  addition  to  .-\c.  It  is  felt  as  the  success  of 
Acd,  which  before  was  kept  back  by  the  stronger  Ac. 
Antl  thus,  without  any  explicit  idea,  an  idea  is  ac- 
tually applied  ;  for  there  is  a  content  which  is  used 
beyond  and  against  existence.  And  this,  1  think, 
is  the  explanation  of  the  earliest  felt  activity. 

This  brief  accoimt  is  naturally  o[)en  to  objections, 
but  all  that  are  not  mere  misunderstanding  can,  I 
believe,  be  fully  met.  The  subject,  however,  belongs 
to  j)sycho!ogy,  and  I  must  not  here  pursue  it.  The 
reader  will  have  seen  that  I  assume,  for  the  percep- 
tion of  change,  the  necessity  of  connecting  the  end 
with  the  beginning.  This  is  effected  by  redintegra- 
tion from  the  identical  .?,  and  it  is  probably  assisted 
at  first  by  the  after-sensation  of  the  starting- place, 
persisting  together  with  tlie  result.  And  this  I  am 
obliged  here  to  assume.  Further,  the  realization  of 
Acd  must  not  be  attached  as  an  adjective  to  any- 
thing outside  A,  such  as  E.  This  would  be  fatal 
to  the  appearance  of  a  feeling  of  activity.  A  must, 
for  our  feeling,  be  Acd;  and,  again,  that  must  be 
checked  by  the  more  dominant  Ac.  It  must  be 
unable  to  establish  itself,  and  yet  must  struggle, — 
that  is,  oscillate  and  waver.  Hence  a  wavering 
Acd,  causing  pleasure  at  each  partial  success,  and  re- 
sisted by  Ac,  which   you   may  take,  as  yt)u    prefer, 


lOO 


APPEARANCE. 


for  its  negative  or  its  privation^this  is  what  after- 
wards turns  into  that  strange  scandalous  hybrid, 
potential  existence.  And  d,  as  a  content  that  is  re- 
jected by  existence,  is  on  the  highway  to  become 
an  explicit  idea.  And  with  these  too  scanty  ex- 
planations I  must  return  from  the  excursion  we 
have  made  into  psychology. 

(7)  There  is  still  another  meaning  of  self  which 
wo  can  hardly  pass  by,  though  we  need  say  very 
little  about  it  at  present.'  1  refer  to  that  use  in 
which  self  is  the  same  as  the  "  mere  self  "  or  the 
"  simply  subjective."  This  meaning  is  not  difficult 
to  fix  in  general.  Everything  which  is  part  of  the 
individual's  psychical  content.s,  and  which  is  not  re- 
levant to  a  certain  function,  is  mere  self  to  that 
function.  Thus,  in  thinking,  everything  in  my 
mind — all  sensations,  feelings,  ideas  which  do  not 
subserve  the  thought  in  question — is  unessential  ; 
and,  because  it  is  self,  it  is  therefore  mere  self.  So, 
again,  in  morality  or  in  ccsthetic  perception,  what 
stands  outside  these  processes  (if  they  are  what  they 
should  be)  is  simply  "subjective,"  because  it  is  not 
concerned  in  the  "object"  of  the  process.  Mere 
self  is  whatever  part  of  the  psychical  individual  is, 
for  the  purpose  in  hand,  negative.  It,  at  lea.st,  is 
irrelevani",  and  it  may  be  even  worse. 

This  in  general  is  clearly  the  meaning,  and  it 
surely  will  give  us  no  help  in  our  present  difficulties. 
The  point  which  should  be  noticed  is  that  it"  has  no 
fixed  application,  l-'or  that  which  is  "objective" 
and  essential  to  one  kind  of  purpose,  may  be  irrele- 
vant and  "  subjective  "  to  every  other  kind  of  pur- 
pose. And  this  distinction  holds  even  among  cases 
of  the  same  kind.  That  feature,  for  example,  which 
is  essential  to  one  moral  act  may  be  without  signifi- 
cance  for  another,    and  may  therefore  be   merely 

*  See  Chapter  xix. 


THE    MEANINGS    OF    SELF. 

myself.  In  brief,  there  is  nothing  in  a  man  which 
is  not  thus  "objective  "  or  "subjective,"  as  the  end 
which  we  are  considering  is  from  time  to  time 
chanored.  The  self  here  stands  for  that  which,  for 
a  present  purpose,  is  the  eka/ue  self  And  it  is 
obvious,  if  we  compare  tliis  meaning  with  those 
which  have  preceded,  that  it  does  not  coincide  with 
them.  It  is  at  once  too  wide  and  too  narrow.  It 
is  too  wide,  because  nothing  falls  essentially  outside 
it ;  and  yet  it  is  too  narrow,  because  anything,  so 
soon  as  you  have  taken  that  in  reference  to  any 
kind  of  system,  is  at  once  excluded  from  the  mere 
self.  It  is  not  the  simply  felt ;  for  it  is  essentially 
qualified  by  negation.  It  is  that  which,  as  against 
anything  transcending  mere  feeling,  remains  outside 
as  a  residue.  We  might,  if  we  pleased,  call  it  what, 
by  contrast,  is  only  the  felt.  But  then  we  must 
include  under  feeling  every  psychical  fact,  if  con- 
sidered merely  as  such  and  as  existing  immediately. 
There  is,  however,  here  no  need  to  dwell  any 
further  on  this  point. 

I  will  briefly  resume  the  results  of  this  chapter. 
We  had  found  that  our  ideas  as  to  the  nature  of 
things — as  to  substance  and  adjective,  relation  and 
quality,  space  antl  time,  motion  and  activity — were 
in  their  essence  indefensible.  But  we  had  heard 
somewhere  a  rumour  that  the  self  was  to  bring  order 
into  chaos.  And  we  were  curious  first  to  know 
what  this  term  might  stand  for.  The  present 
chapter  has  supplied  us  with  an  answer  too  plentiful. 
Self  has  turned  out  to  mean  so  many  things,  to 
mean  them  so  ambiguously,  and  to  be  so  wavering 
in  its  applications,  that  we  do  not  feel  encouraged. 
We  found,  first,  that  a  man's  self  might  be  his  total 
present  contents,  discoverable  on  making  an  im- 
aginary cross  section.  Or  it  might  be  the  average 
contents  we  should  presume  ourselves  likely  to  find, 
together  with    something   else   which    we  call    dis- 


I02  APPEARANCE. 

positions.  From  this  we  drifted  into  a  search  for 
the  self  as  the  essential  point  or  area  within  the  self; 
and  we  discovered  that  we  really  did  not  know  what 
this  was.  Then  we  went  on  to  perceive  that,  under 
personal  identity,  we  entertained  a  confused  bundle 
of  conflicting  ideas.  Again  the  self,  as  merely  that 
which  for  the  time  being  interests,  proved  not  satis- 
factory ;  and  from  this  we  passed  to  the  distinction 
and  the  division  of  self  as  against  the  not-self  Here, 
in  both  the  theoretical  and  again  in  the  practical 
relation,  we  found  that  the  self  had  no  contents  that 
were  fixed ;  or  it  had,  at  least,  none  sufficient  to 
make  it  a  self.  And  in  that  connection  we  per- 
ceived the  origin  of  our  perception  of  activity. 
Finally,  we  dragged  to  the  light  another  meaning  of 
self,  not  coinciding  with  tlie  others ;  and  we  saw 
that  this  designates  any  psychical  fact  which  remains 
outside  any  purpose  to  which  at  any  time  psychical 
fact  is  being  applied.  In  this  sense  self  is  .the 
unused  residue,  defined  negatively  by  want  of  use, 
and  positively  by  feeling  in  the  sense  of  mere 
psychical  existence.  And  there  was  no  matter 
which  essentially  fell,  or  did  not  fall,  under  this 
heading. 


CHAPTER    X. 


THE   REALITY  OF  SELF. 


In  the  present  chapter  we  must  brielly  inquire  into 
the  selfs  reality.  Naturally  the  self  is  a  fact,  to/ 
some  extent  and  in  some  sense ;  and  this,  of  course, 
is  not  the  issue.  The  question  is  whether  the  self 
in  any  of  its  meanings  can,  as  such,  be  real.  We 
have  found  above  that  things  seem  essentially  made 
of  inconsistencies.  And  there  is  understood  now  to 
be  a  claim  on  the  part  of  the  self,  not  only  to  main- 
tain and  to  justify  its  own  proper  beings,  hut,  in 
addition,  to  rescue  things  from  the  condemnation  we 
have  passed  on  them.  But  the  latter  part  of  the  , 
claim  may  be  left  undiscussed.  We  shall  find  that 
the  self  has  no  power  to  defend  its  own  reality  from 
mortal  objections. 

It  is  the  old  puzzle  as  to  the  connection  of  diver- 
sity with  unity.  As  the  diversity  becomes  mon 
complex  and  the  unity  grows  more  concrete,  wc 
have,  so  far,  found  that  our  difliculties  steadily 
increase.  And  the  expectation  of  a  sudden  change 
and  a  happy  solution,  when  wc  arrive  at  the  self, 
seems  hence  little  warranted.  And  if  we  glance  at 
the  individual  self,  as  we  find  it  at  one  time,  there 
seems  at  first  sight  no  clear  harmony  which  orders 
and  unites  its  entangled  confusion.  At  least, 
popular  ideas  are  on  this  point  visibly  unavailing. 
The  complexity  of  the  phenomena,  exhibited  by  a 
cross  section,  must  be  admitted  to  exist.  But  how 
in   any   sense   they  can  be  one,  even  apart   from 


I04  APPEARAXCF. 

alteration,  is  a  problem  not  attempted.  And  when 
the  self  changes  in  time,  are  we  able  to  justify  the 
inconsistency  which  most  palpably  appears,  or,  rather, 
stares  us  in  the  face  ?  You  may  say  that  we  are  each 
assured  of  our  personal  identity  in  a  way  in  which 
we  are  not  assured  of  the  sameness  of  things.  But 
this  is,  unfortunately,  quite  irrelevant  to  the  question. 
That  selves  exist,  and  are  identical  in  some  sense,  is 
indubitable.  But  the  doubt  is  whether  their  same- 
ness, as  we  apprehend  it,  is  really  intelligfible,  and 
whether  it  can  be  true  in  the  character  in  which  it 
comes  to  us.  Because  otherwise,  while  it  will  be 
certain  that  the  self  and  its  identity  somehow  belong 
to  reality,  it  will  be  equally  certain  that  this  fact  has 
someAow  been  essentially  misapprehended.  And 
our  conclusion  must  be  that,  since,  as  such,  it  con- 
tradicts itself,  this  fact  must,  as  such,  be  unreal. 
The  self  also  will  in  the  end  be  no  more  than  ap- 
pearance. 

This  question  turns,  I  presume,  on  the  possibility 
of  finding  some  spiecial  experience  which  will 
furnish  a  new  point  of  view.  It  is,  of  course,  ad- 
mitted that  the  self  presents  us  with  fresh  matter, 
and  with  an  increased  complication.  The  point  in 
debate  is  whether  at  the  same  time  it  supplies  us' 
with  any  key  to  the  whole  puzzle  about  realit)'. 
Does  it  give  an  experience  by  the  help  of  which  we 
can  understand  the  way  in  which  diversity  is  har- 
monized ?  Or,  failing  that,  does  it  remove  all 
necessity  for  such  an  understanding }  I  am  con- 
vinced that  both  these  questions  must  be  answered 
in  the  negative. 

{a)  For  mere  feeling,  to  begin  the  inquiry  with 
this,  gives  no  answer  to  our  riddle.  It  may  be  said 
truly  tliat  in  feeling,  if  you  take  it  low  enough 
down,  there  is  plurality  with  unity  and  without 
contradiction.  There  being  no  relations  and  no 
terms,  and  yet,  on  the  other  side,  more  than  bare 
simplicity,    we    experience    a  concrete    whole    as 


THE   REALITY   OF   SELK 


105 


actual  fact.  And  this  fact,  it  may  be  alleged,  is  the 
understanding  of  our  self,  or  is,  at  least,  that  which  is 
superior  to  and  over-rides  any  mere  intellectual 
criticism.  It  must  be  accepted  for  what  it  is,  and 
its  reality  must  be  admitted  by  the  intelligence  as 
an  unique  revelation, 

But  no  such  claim  can  be  maintained.  I  will 
begin  by  pointing  out  that  feeling,  if  a  revelation,  is 
not  exclusively  or  even  specially  a  revelation  of  the 
self.  For  you  must  choose  one  of  two  things. 
Either  you  do  not  descend  low  enough  to  get  rid  of 
relations  with  all  their  inconsistency,  or  else  you 
have  reached  a  level  where  subject  and  object  are 
in  no  sense  distinguished,  and  where,  therefore, 
neither  self  nor  its  opposite  exists.  Feeling,  if  1 
taken  as  immediate  presentation,  most  obviously 
gives  features  of  what  later  becomes  the  environ- 
ment. And  these  are  indivisibly  one  thing  with  i 
what  later  becomes  the  self.  Feeling,  therefore, 
can  be  no  unique  or  special  revelation  of  the  self,  in 
distinction  from  any  other  element  of  the  universe. 
Nor,  even  if  feeling  be  used  wrongly  as  equivalent 
to  the  aspect  of  pleasure  or  pain,'  need  we  much 
modify  our  conclusion.  This  is  a  point  on  which 
naturally  I  have  seen  a  good  many  dogmatic  asser- 
tions, but  I  liave  found  no  argument  worth  serious 
consideration.  Why  in  the  case  of  a  pleasant  feel- 
ing— for  example,  that  of  warmth — the  sideof  pleasure 
should  belong  to  the  self,  and  the  side  of  sensation 
to  the  not-self  (psychologically  or  logically).  I  really 
do  not  know.  If  we  keep  to  facts,  it  seems  clear 
that  at  the  beginning  no  such  distinction  exists  at 
all ;  and  it  is  clear  too  that  at  the  latest  stage  there 
are  some  elements  within  the  not-self  which  retain 
their  original  aspect  of  pleasure  or  pain.  And 
hence    we    must   come   to   this   result.     We   could 

•  I  think  this  confined  use  wrong,  but  it  is,  of  course,  legitimate. 
To  ignore  the  existence  of  other  uses  is,  on  the  otiier  hami,  in- 
excusable. 


io6 


APPEARANCE. 


make  little  metaphysical  use  of  the  doctrine  that 
pleasure  and  pain  belong  solely  to  the  self  as 
distinct  from  the  not-self  And  the  doctrine  itself 
is  quite  without  foundation.  It  is  not  even  true 
that  at  first  self  and  not-self  exist.  And  though 
it  is  true  that  pleasure  and  pain  are  the  main  feature 
on  which  later  this  distinction  is  based,  yet  it  is 
even  then  false  that  they  may  not  belong  to  the 
object. 

But,  if  we  leave  this  error  and  return  once  more 
to  feeling.  In  the  sense  of  that  which  comes  undif- 
ferentiated, we  are  forced  to  see  that  it  cannot  give 
the  knowledge  which  we  seek.  It  is  an  apprehen- 
sion too  defective  to  lay  hold  on  reality.  In  the 
first  place,  its  content  and  its  form  are  not  in  agree- 
ment ;  and  tliis  is  manifest  when  feeling  changes 
from  moment  to  moment.  Then  the  matter,  which 
ought  to  come  to  us  harmoniously  and  as  one  whole, 
becomes  plainly  discrepant  within  itself  The 
content  exhibits  its  essential  relativity.  It  depends, 
that  is  to  say — in  order  to  be  what  it  Is — upon  some- 
thing not  itself.  Feeling  ought  to  be  something  all 
In  one  and  self-contained,  if  not  simple.  Its  essence 
ought  not  to  include  matter  the  adjective  of,  and 
with  a  reference  to,  a  foreign  existence.  It  should 
be  real,  and  should  not  be,  in  this  sense,  partly  ideal. 
And  the  form  of  imn\ediacy,  in  which  it  offers 
itself,  implies  this  self-subslstent  cliaracter.  But  in 
change  the  content  slips  away,  and  becomes  some- 
thing else  ;  while,  again,  change  appears  necessary 
and  implied  in  its  being.  Mutability  is  a  fact  in  the 
actual  feeling  which  we  experience,  for  that  never 
continues  at  rest.  And,  If  we  examine  the  content 
at  any  one  given  moment,  we  perceive  that,  though 
it  presents  itself  as  self-subslstent,  it  Is  Infected  by 
a  deep-seated  relativity.  And  this  will  force  itself 
into  view,  first  in  the  experience  of  change,  and 
later,  for  reflection.  Again,  In  the  second  place, 
apart  from  this  objection,  and  even  if  feeling  were 


THE    REALITY   OF   SELF. 


!07 


self-conslstcnt.  it  would  not  suffice  for  a  knowledge 
of  reality.  Reality,  as  it  commonly  appears,  con- 
tains terms  and  relations,  and  indeed  may  be  said  to 
consist  in  these  mainly.  But  the  form  of  fee-ling  (on 
the  other  side)  is  not  above,  but  is  below,  the  level 
of  relations ;  and  it  therefore  cannot  possibly  ex- 
press them  or  explain  them.  Hence  it  is  idle  to 
suppose,  given  relational  matter  as  the  object  to  be 
understood,  that  feeling  will  supply  any  way  of 
understanding  it.  And  this  objection  seems  quite 
fatal.  Thus  we  are  forced  beyond  feeling,  first  by 
change,  and  then  further  by  the  relational  form 
which  remains  obstinately  outstanding.  But,  when 
once  more  we  betake  ourselves  to  reflection,  we 
seem  to  have  made  no  advance.  For  the  incom- 
pleteness and  relativity  in  the  matter  given  by  feeling 
become,  when  we  reflect  on  them,  open  contradic- 
tion. The  limitation  is  seen  to  be  a  reference  to 
something  beyond,  and  the  self-subsistent  fact  shows 
ideality,  and  turns  round  into  mere  adjectives  whose 
support  we  cannot  find.  Feeling  can  be,  therefore,  no 
solution  of  the  puzzles  which,  so  far,  have  proved  to 
be  insoluble,  its  content  is  vitiated  throughout  by 
the  old  inconsistencies.  It  may  be  said  even  to 
thrust  upon  us,  in  a  still  more  apparent  form,  the 
discrepancy  that  lies  between  identity  and  diversity, 
immediate  oneness  and  relation. 

(d)  Thus  mere  feeling  has  no  power  to  justify  the 
self's  reality,  and  naturally  none  to  solve  the  prob- 
lems of  the  universe  at  large.  But  we  may  perhaps 
be  more  fortunate  with  some  form  of  self-conscious- 
ness. That  possibly  may  furnish  us  with  a  key  to 
the  self,  and  so  also  to  the  world  ;  and  let  us  briefly 
make  an  attempt.  The  prospect  is  certainly  at  first 
sight  not  very  encouraging.  For  (i.)  if  we  take  the 
actual  matter  revealed  by  self-consciousness,  that  (in 
any  sense  in  which  it  pleases  us  to  understand  self) 
seems  quite  inconsistent  internally.  If  the  reader 
will  recall  the  discussions  of  the  preceding  chapter, 


? 


io8 


APPEARANCE. 


he  may,  I  think,  convince  himself  on  this  point. 
Take  the  self,  either  at  one  time  or  throughout  any 
duration,  and  its  contents  do  not  seem  to  arrange 
themselves  as  a  harmony.  Nor  have  we,  so  far, 
found  a  principle  by  the  application  of  which  we  arc 
enabled  to  arrange  them  without  contradiction, 
(ii.)  But  self-consciousness,  we  may  be  told,  is  a 
(special  way  of  intuition,  or  perception,  or  what  you 
jwili.  And  this  experience  of  both  subject  and  object 
in  one  self,  or  of  the  identity  of  the  Ego  through  and 
in  the  opposition  of  itself  to  itself,  or  generally  the 
self-apprehension  of  the  self  as  one  and  many,  is  at 
last  the  full  answer  to  our  whole  series  of  riddles. 
But  to  my  mind  such  an  answer  brings  no  satisfac- 
tion. For  it  seems  liable  to  the  objections  which 
proved  fatal  to  mere  feeling.  Suppose,  for  argu- 
ment's sake,  that  the  intuition  (as  you  describe  it) 
actually  exists  ;  suppose  that  in  this  intuition,  while 
you  keep  to  it,  you  possess  a  diversity  without  dis- 
crepancy. This  is  one  thing,  but  it  is  quite  another 
thing  to  possess  a  principle  which  can  serve  for  the 
understanding  of  reality.  For  how  does  this  way  of 
apprehension  suffice  to  take  in  a  long  series  ol 
events  ?  How  again  does  it  embrace,  and  transcend, 
and  go  beyond,  the  relational  form  of  discursive  in- 
telligence? The  world  is  surely  not  understood  if 
understanding  is  left  out.  And  in  what  manner 
can  your  intuition  satisfy  the  claims  of  understand- 
ing .''  This,  to  my  mind,  forms  a  wholly  insuperable 
obstacle.  For  the  contents  of  the  intuition  (this 
many  in  one),  if  you  try  to  reconstruct  them  relation- 
ally,  fall  asunder  forthwith.  And  the  attempt  to 
find  in  self-consciousness  an  apprehension  at  a  level, 
not  below,  but  above  relations — a  way  of  apprehen- 
sion superior  to  discursive  thought,  and  including  its 
mere  process  in  a  higher  harmony — appears  to  me 
not  successful.  I  am,  in  short.  com[ielled  to  this 
I  conclusion,  even  if  your  intuition  is  a  fact,  it  is  not 
an  understanding  of  the  self  ur  of  the  world.     It  is  a 


•1 


V^  THE   REALITY   OF   SELF.  lOQ 

Qe>  mere  experience,  and  it  furnishes  no  consistent  view 
j  ^  I  about  itself  or  about  reality  in  general.  An  experi- 
sJ^  I  ence,  I  suppose,  can  override  understanding  only  in 
.  I  one  way,  by  including  it,  that  is,  as  a  subordinate 
V  '  element  somehow  within  itself.  And  such  an  ex- 
<  ,  perience  is  a  thing  which  seems  not  discoverable  in 
j      self-consciousness. 

*  ■  And  (iii.)  I  am  forced  to  urge  this  last  objection 

'^  against  the  whole  form  of  self-consciousness,  as  it 
*  was  described  above.  There  does  not  really  exist 
any  perception,  either  in  which  the  object  and  the 
subject  are  quite  the  same,  or  in  which  their  same- 
ness amid  difference  is  an  object  for  perception. 
Any  such  consciousness  would  seem  to  be  impossible 
psychologically.  And,  as  it  is  almost  useless  for  me 
to  try  to  anticipate  the  reader's  views  on  this  point, 
I  must  content  myself  with  a  very  brief  statement. 
Self-consciousness,  as  distinct  from  self-feeling,  im- 
plies a  relation.  It  is  the  state  where  the  self  has 
become  an  object  that  stands  before  the  mind.  This 
means  that  an  element  is  in  opposition  to  the  felt 
mass,  and  is  disting^iished  from  it  as  a  not-self.  And 
there  is  no  doubt  that  the  self,  in  its  various  mean- 
ings, can  become  such  a  not-self.  But,  in  whichever 
of  its  meanings  we  intend  to  consider  it,  the  result 
is  the  same.  The  object  is  never  wholly  identical 
with  the  subject,  and  the  background  of  feeling  must 
contain  a  great  deal  more  than  what  we  at  any  time 
can  perceive  as  the  self.  And  I  confess  that  I 
scarcely  know  how  to  argue  this  point.  To  me  the 
idea  that  the  whole  self  can  be  observed  in  one  per- 
ception would  be  merely  chimerical.  I  find,  first, 
that  in  the  felt  background  there  remains  an  obscure 
residue  of  internal  sensation,  which  I  perhaps  at  no 
time  can  distinguish  as  an  object.  And  this  felt 
background  at  any  moment  will  almost  certainly 
contain  also  elements  from  outer  sensation.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  self,  as  an  object,  will  at  any  one 
time  embrace  but  a  poor  extent  of  detail.     It  is 


I  lO 


APPEARANCE. 


palpably  and  flagrantly  much  more  narrow  than  the 
background  felt  as  self.  And  in  order  to  exhaust 
this  felt  mass  (if  indeed  exhaustion  is  possible)  we 
require  a  series  of  patient  observations,  in  none  of 
which  will  the  object  be  as  full  as  the  subject.'  To 
have  the  felt  self  in  its  totality  as  an  object  for  con- 
sciousness seems  out  of  the  question.  And  I  would 
further  ask  the  reader  to  bear  in  mind  that,  where 
the  self  is  observed  as  in  opposition  to  the  not-self, 
this  whole  relation  is  included  within  that  felt  back- 
ground, against  which,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
distinction  takes  place. 

And  this  suggests  an  objection.  How,  I  may  be 
asked,  if  self-consciousness  is  no  more  than  you  say, 
do  we  take  one  object  as  self  and  another  as  not- 
self  ?  Why  is  the  observed  object  perceived  at  all 
in  the  character  of  self  ?  This  is  a  question,  I  think, 
not  difficult  to  answer,  so  far  at  least  as  is  required 
for  our  purpose  here.  The  all-important  point  is 
this,  that  the  unity  of  feeling  never  disappears.  The 
mass,  at  first  undifferentiated,  groups  itself  into 
objects  in  relation  to  me  ;  and  then  again  further 
the  "  me  "  becomes  explicit,  and  itself  is  an  object  in 
relation  to  the  background  of  feeling.  But,  none 
the  less,  the  object  not-self  is  still  a  part  of  the  indi- 
vidual soul,  and  the  object  self  likewise  keeps  its 
place  in  this  felt  unity.  The  distinctions  have  super- 
vened upon,  but  they  have  not  divided,  the  original 
whole ;  and,  if  they  had  done  so,  the  result  would 
have  been  mere  destruction.  Hence,  in  self-con- 
sciousness, those  contents  perceived  as  the  self 
belong  still  to  the  whole  individual  mass.  They, 
in  the  first  place,  are  features  in  the  felt  totality ; 
then  again  they  are  elements  in  that  inner  group 
from  which  the  not-self  is  distinguished  ;  and  finally 
they  become  an  object  opposed  to  the  internal  back- 


'  The  possibility  of  this  series  rests  on  the  fact  that  sameness 
and  alleratioii  can  be/<"//  where  they  are  not  pent hxd.    Cp.  p.  93. 


THK    REALITY   OF   SELF. 


!  1  I 


ground.  Aiul  these  contents  exist  thus  in  several 
forms  all  at  once.  And  so,  just  as  the  not-self  is  I 
felt  as  still  psychically  my  state,  the  self,  when  made  \ 
an  object,  is  still  felt  as  individually  one  with  me. 
Nay,  we  may  reilect  upon  this  unity  of  feeling,  and 
may  say  that  the  self,  as  self  and  as  not-self  all  in  one, 
IS  our  object  And  this  is  true  if  we  mean  that  it  is 
an  object yor  rfjleclion.  Out  in  that  reflection  once 
more  there  is  an  actual  subject ;  and  that  actual  sub 
ject  is  a  mass  of  feelings  much  fuller  than  the  object  ; 
and  it  is  a  subject  which  in  no  sense  is  an  object y<7r 
the  reflection.  The  feature,  of  being  not-self  and 
self  in  one  self  can  indeed  be  brought  before  the 
present  subject,  and  can  be  felt  to  be  its  own.  The 
unity  of  feeling  can  become  an  object  for  perception 
and  thought,  and  can  also  be  felt  to  belong  to  the 
self  which  is  present,  and  which  is  the  subject  that 
perceives.  But,  without  entering  into  psychological 
refinements  and  difficulties,  we  may  be  sure  of  this 
main  result.  The  actual  subject  is  never,  in  any 
state  of  mind,  brought  before  itself  as  an  object.  It 
has  that  before  it  which  it  feels  to  be  itself,  so  far  at 
least  as  to  fall  within  its  own  area,  and  to  be  one 
thing  with  its  felt  unity.  But  the  actual  subject 
never  feels  that  it  is  all  out  there  in  its  object,  that 
there  is  nothing  more  left  within,  and  that  the  differ- 
ence has  disappeared.  And  of  this  we  can  surely 
convince  ourselves  by  observation.  The  subject  in 
the  end  must  be  felt,  and  it  can  never  (as  it  is)  be 
perceived. 

But,  if  so,  then  self-consciousness  will  not  solve 
our  former  difficulties.  For  these  distinctions,  of 
self  and  of  not-self  in  one  whole,  are  noi  presented 
as  the  reality  even  of  my  self.  They  are  given  as 
found  within  it,  but  not  as  exhausting  it.  But  even 
if  the  self  did,  what  it  cannot  do,  and  guaranteed 
this  arrangement  as  its  proper  reality,  that  would 
still  leave  us  at  a  loss.  For  unless  we  could  think 
the  arrangement  so  as  to  be  consistent  with  itself 


I  12 


APPEARANCE. 


we  could  not  admit  it  as  beingf  the  truth  about 
reality.  It  would  merely  be  an  experience,  unin- 
telligible or  deceptive.  And  it  is  an  experience 
which,  we  have  now  seen,  has  no  existence  in  fact. 

(c)  We  found  the  self,  as  mere  feeling,  gave  us  no 
key  to  our  puzzles,  and  we  have  not  had  more  suc- 
cess in  our  attempt  with  self-consciousness.  So  far 
as  that  transcends  mere  feeling,  it  is  caught  in,  and 
is  dissipated  by,  the  old  illusory  play  of  relations 
and  qualities.  It  repeats  this  illusion,  without  doubt, 
at  a  higher  level  than  before;  the  endeavour  is  more 
ambitious,  but  the  result  is  still  the  same.  For  we 
have  not  been  taught  how  to  understand  diversity 
in  unity.  And  though,  in  my  judgment,  the  further 
task  should  now  be  superfluous,  I  will  briefly  touch 
upon  some  other  claims  made  for  the  self  The 
first  rests  on  the  consciousness  of  personal  identity. 
This  may  be  supposed  to  have  some  bearing  on  the 
reality  of  the  self,  but  to  my  mind  it  appears  to  be 
almost  irrelevant.  Of  course  the  self,  within  limits 
and  up  to  a  certain  point,  is  the  same ;  and  I  will 
leave  to  others  the  attempt  to  fix  those  limits  by  a 
principle.  For,  in  my  opinion,  there  is  none  which 
at  bottom  is  not  arbitrary.  But  what  I  fail  to  per- 
ceive is  the  metaphysical  conclusion  which  comes 
from  a  consciousness  of  self-sameness.  I  quite 
understand  that  this  fact  disproves  any  doctrine  of 
the  selfs  mere  discreteness.  Or,  more  correctly, 
it  is  an  obvious  instance  against  a  doctrine  which 
evidently  contradicts  itself  in  principle.  The  self  is 
iiol  merely  discrete ;  and  therefore  (doubtless  by 
some  wonderful  alternative)  we  are  carried  to  a 
positive  result  about  its  reality.  But  the  facts  of 
the  case  seem  merely  to  be  thus.  As  long  as  there 
remains  in  the  self  a  certain  basis  of  content,  ideally 
the  same,  so  long  may  the  self  recall  anything  once 
associated  with  that  basis.  And  this  identity  of 
content,  working  by  redintegration  and  so  bringing 


THE   REALITY    OF   SELF. 


I  r 


I 


up  the  past  as  the  history  of  one  self — really  this  is 
all  which  we  have  to  build  upon.  Now  this,  of 
course,  shows  that  self-sameness  e.xists  as  a  fact, 
and  that  hence  somehow  an  identical  self  must  be 
real.  But  then  the  question  is  how  ?  The  question 
is  whether  we  can  state  the  existence  and  the  con- 
tinuity of  a  real  self  in  a  way  which  is  intelligible, 
and  which  is  not  ruined  by  the  difficulties  of  previous 
discussions.  Because,  otherwise,  we  may  have  found 
an  interesting  fact,  but  most  assuredly  we  have  not 
found  a  tenable  view  about  reality.  That  tenable 
view,  if  we  got  sight  of  it,  might  show  us  that  our 
fact  had  been  vitally  misapprehended.  At  all 
events,  so  long  as  we  can  offer  only  a  bundle  of 
inconsistencies,  it  is  absurd  to  try  to  believe  that 
these  are  the  true  reality.  And,  if  any  one  likes  to 
fall  back  upon  a  miraculous  faculty  which  he  dis- 
covers in  memory,  the  case  is  not  altered.  For  the 
issue  is  as  to  the  truth  either  of  the  message  con- 
veyed, or  of  our  conclusion  from  that  message. 
And,  for  myself,  I  stand  on  this.  Present  your 
doctrine  {whatever  it  is)  in  a  form  which  will  bear 
criticism,  and  which  will  enable  me  to  understand 
this  confused  mass  of  facts  which  I  encounter  on  all 
sides.  Do  this,  and  I  will  follow  you,  and  I  will 
worship  the  source  of  such  a  true  revelation.  But  I 
will  not  accept  nonsense  for  reality,  though  it  be 
vouched  for  by  miracle,  or  proceed  from  the  mouth 
of  a  psychological  monster. 

And  I  am  compelled  to  adopt  the  same  attitude 
towards  another  supposed  fact.  I  refer  to  the  unity 
in  such  a  function  as,  for  instance.  Comparison. 
This  has  been  assumed  to  be  timeless,  and  to  serve 
as  a  foundation  for  metaphysical  views  about  the  self. 
But  I  am  forced  to  reject  alike  both  basis  and  result, 
if  that  result  be  offered  as  a  positive  view.  It  is  in 
the  first  place  (as  we  have  seen  in  Chapter  v.) 
psychologically  untenable  to  take  any  mental  fact  j 
as  free  from  duration.     And,  apart  from  that,  what' 

A.  R.  I 


114 


APPEARANCE. 


works  in  any  function  must  be  something  concrete 
and  specially  relevant  to  that  function.  In  com- 
parison it  must  be,  for  instance,  a  special  basis  of 
identity  in  the  terms  to  be  compared.^  A  timeless 
self,  acting  in  a  particular  way  from  its  general  time- 
less nature,  is  to  me,  in  the  first  place,  a  psycho- 
logical monster.  And,  in  the  second  place,  if  this 
extraordinary  fact  did  exist,  it  would  indeed  serve  to 
show  that  certain  views  were  not  true  ;  but,  beyond 
that,  it  would  remain  a  mere  extraordinary  fact.  At 
least  for  myself  1  do  not  perceive  how  it  supplies 
us  with  a  conclusion  about  the  self  or  the  world, 
which  is  consistent  and  defensible.  And  here  once 
again  we  have  the  same  issue.  We  have  found 
puzzles  in  reality,  besetting  every  way  in  which  we 
have  taken  it.  Now  give  me  a  view  not  obnoxious 
to  these  mortal  attacks,  and  combining  differences 
in  one  so  as  to  turn  the  edge  of  criticism — and  then 
1  will  thank  you.  But  I  cannot  be  grateful  for  an 
assertion  which  seems  to  serve  merely  as  an  object- 
tion  to  another  doctrine,  otherwise  known  to  be 
false ;  an  assertion,  which,  if  we  accepted  it  as  we 
cannot,  would  leave  us  simply  with  a  very  strange 
fact  on  our  hands.  Such  a  fact  is  certainly  no 
principle  by  which  we  could  solve  the  riddle  of  the 
universe. 


{(/)  I  must  next  venture  a  few  words  on  an 
embarrassing  topic,  the  supposed  revelation  of 
reality  within  the  self  as  force  or  will.  And  the 
difificulty  comes,  not  so  much  from  the  nature  of  the 
subject,  as  from  the  manner  of  its  treatment.  If  we 
could  get  a  clear  statement  as  to  the  matter  revealed, 
we  could  at  this  stage  of  our  discussion  dispose  of  it 
in  a  few  words,  or  rather  point  out  that  it  has  been 
already  disposed  of.  But  a  clear  statement  is  pre- 
cisely that  which  (so  far  as  my  experience  goes)  is 
not  to  be  had. 

'  There  are  some  further  remarks  in  MinJ,  Nos.  41  and  43. 


THE   REALITY    OF    SELF. 


115 


I 


\ 


The  reader  who  recalls  our  discussions  on  activity, 
will  remember  how  it  literally  was  riddled  by  con- 
tradictions. All  the  puzzles  as  to  adjectives  and 
relations  and  terms,  every  dilemma  as  to  time  and 
causation,  seemed  to  meet  in  it  and  there  even  to 
find  an  addition.  Far  from  reducing  these  to 
harmony,  activity,  when  we  tried  to  ihmk  it,  fell 
helplessly  asunder  or  jarred  with  itself.  .And  to 
suppose  that  the  self  is  to  bring  order  into  this 
chaos,  after  our  experience  hitherto  of  tlie  self's 
total  impotence,  seems  more  sanguine  than  rational. 

If  now  we  take  force  or  cause,  as  it  is  revealed  in 
the  self,  to  be  the  same  as  volition  proper,  that 
clearly  will  not  help  us.  For  in  volition  we  have  an 
idea,  determining  change  in  the  self,  and  so  produc- 
ing its  own  realization.'  Volition,  perhaps  at  first 
sight  may  seem  to  promise  a  solution  of  our  meta- 
physical puzzles.  For  we  seem  to  find  at  last  some- 
thing like  a  self-contained  cause  with  an  effect  within 
itself.  But  this  surely  is  illusory.  The  old  difficulties 
about  the  beginning  of  change  and  its  process  in  time, 
the  old  troubles  as  to  diversity  in  union  with  same- 
ness— how  is  any  one  of  these  got  rid  of,  or  made 
more  tractable  ?  It  is  bootless  to  enquire  whether 
we  have  found  a  principle  which  is  to  explain  the 
universe.  For  we  have  not  even  found  anything 
which  can  bear  its  own  weight,  or  can  endure  for 
one  moment  the  most  superficial  scrutiny.  Volition 
gives  us,  of  course,  an  intense  feeling  of  reality  ;  and 
we  may  conclude,  if  we  please,  that  in  this  lies  the 
heart  of  the  mystery  of  things.  Yes,  perhaps  ;  here 
lies  the  answer — for  those  who  may  have  understood  ; 
and  the  whole  question  turns  on  whether  we  have 
reached  an  imderstanding.  But  what  you  offer  me 
appears  much  more  like  an  experience,  not  under- 
stood but  interpreted  into  hopeless  confusion.  It  is 
with  you  as  with  the  man  who,  transported  by  his 

'  I  have  discussed  the  nature  of  will  psychologically  in  AiinJ, 
No.  49. 


Il6 


APPEARANCE. 


passion,  feels  and  knows  that  only  love  gives  the 
secret  of  the  universe.  In  each  case  the  result  is 
perfectly  in  order,  but  one  hardly  sees  why  it  should 
be  called  metaphysics. 

And  we  shall  make  no  advance,  if  we  pass  from 
will  proper  where  an  idea  is  realized,  and  fall  back 
on  an  obscurer  revelation  of  ener^.  In  the  ex- 
perience of  activity,  or  resistance,  or  will,  or  force 
(or  whatever  other  phrase  seems  most  oracular),  we 
are  said  to  come  at  last  down  to  the  rock  of  reality. 
And  I  am  not  so  ill-advised  as  to  ofiler  a  disproof 
of  the  message  revealed.  It  is  doubtless  a  mystery, 
and  hence  those  who  could  inform  the  outer  world 
of  its  meaning,  are  for  that  very  reason  compelled 
to  be  silent  and  to  seem  even  ignorant.  What  I  can 
do  is  to  set  down  briefly  the  external  remarks  of  one 
not  initiated. 

In  the  first  place,  taken  psychologically,  ihe  revela- 
tion is  fraudulent.  There  is  no  original  experience 
of  anything  like  activity,  to  say  nothing  of  resistance. 
This  is  quite  a  secondary  product,  the  origin  of 
which  is  far  from  mysterious,  and  on  which  I  have 
said  something  in  the  preceding  chapter.'  You 
may,  doubtless,  point  to  an  outstanding  margin  of 
undetermined  sensations,  but  these  will  not  contain 
the  essence  of  the  matter.  And  I  do  not  hesitate 
to  say  this  :  Where  you  meet  a  psychologist  who 
takes  this  experience  as  elementary,  you  will  find  a 
man  who  has  not  ever  made  a  serious  attempt  to 
decompose  it,  or  ever  resolutely  faced  the  question 
as  to  what  it  contains.  And  in  the  second  place, 
taken  metaphysicall)',  these  tidings,  given  from 
whatever  source,  are  either  meaningless  or  false. 
And  here  once  again  we  have  the  all-important 
point.     I  do  not  care  what  your  oracle  is,  and  your 

'  I  have  touched  the  question  only  in  its  general  form.  As  to 
the  special  source  from  which  come  the  elements  of  this  or  that 
perception  of  activity,  I  have  not  said  anything.  This  is  a  matter 
for  psychology. 


I 


THE    REALITY   OF   SELF. 


117 


I 


preposterous  psychology  may  here  be  gospel  if  you 
please  ;  the  real  question  is  whether  your  response 
(so  far  as  it  means  anythino^)  is  not  appearance  and 
illusion.  If  it  means  nothing,  that  is  to  say,  if  it 
is  merely  a  datum,  which  has  no  complex  content 
that  can  be  taken  as  a  principle — then  it  will  be 
much  what  we  have  in,  say,  pleasure  or  pain.  But 
if  you  offered  me  one  of  these  as  a  theoretical 
account  of  the  universe,  you  would  not  be  even 
mistaken,  but  simply  nonsensical.  And  it  is  the 
same  with  activity  or  force,  if  these  also  merely  are, 
and  say  nothing.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
revelation  does  contain  a  meaning,  I  will  commit 
myself  to  this  :  either  the  oracle  is  so  confused  that 
its  signification  is  not  discoverable,  or,  upon  the 
other  hand,  if  it  can  be  pinned  down  to  any  definite 
statement,  then  that  statement  will  be  false.  When 
we  drag  it  out  into  the  light,  and  e.\pose  it  to  the 
criticism  of  our  foregoing  discussions,  it  will  e.vhibit 
its  helplessness,  it  will  be  proved  to  contain  mere 
unsolved  discrepancies,  and  will  give  us  therefore, 
not  truth,  but  in  the  end  appearance  And  I  intend 
to  leave  this  matter  so  without  further  remark. 

(e)  1  will  in  conclusion  touch  briefly  on  the  theory 
of  Monads.  A  tenable  view  of  reality  has  been 
sought  in  the  doctrine  that  each  self  is  an  indepen- 
dent reality,  substantial  if  not  simple.  But  this 
attempt  does  not  call  for  a  lengthy  discussion.  In 
the  first  place,  if  there  is  more  than  one  self  in  the 
universe,  we  are  met  by  the  problem  of  their  rela- 
tion to  each  other.  And  the  reply,  "  Why  there  is 
none,"  we  have  already  seen  in  Chapter  iii.,  is  no 
sufficient  defence.  For  plurality  and  separateness 
without  a  relation  of  separation  seem  really  to  have 
no  meaning.  And,  from  the  other  side,  without 
relations  these  poor  monads  would  have  no  process 
and  would  serve  no  purpose.  But  relations  admitted, 
again,  are  fatal  to  the  monads'  independence.  The 
substances    clearly    become    adjectival,    and    mere 


Ii8 


APPEARANCE. 


elements  within  an  all-comprehending  whole.  And 
hence  there  is  left  remaining  for  their  internal  con- 
tents no  solid  principle  of  stability.'  And  in  the 
second  place,  even  if  this  remained,  it  would  be  no 
solution  of  our  difificulties.  For  consider  :  we  have 
found,  so  far,  that  diversity  and  unity  can  not  be 
reconciled.  Both  in  the  existence  of  the  whole  self 
in  relation  with  its  contents,  and  in  the  various 
special  forms  which  that  existence  takes,  we  have 
encountered  everywhere  the  same  trouble.  We 
have  had  features  which  must  come  together,  and 
yet  were  wilting  to  do  so  in  no  way  that  we  could 
find.  In  the  self  there  is  a  variety,  and  in  the  self 
there  is  an  unity  ;  but,  in  attempting  to  understand 
how,  we  fall  into  inconsistencies  which,  therefore,  can- 
not be  truth.  And  now  in  what  way  is  the  monadic 
character  of  the  self — with  whatever  precise  mean- 
ing (if  with  any)  we  take  this  up — about  to  assist 
us  ?  Will  it  in  the  least  show  us  hozv  the  diversity 
can  exist  in  harmony  with  the  oneness.'  If  it 
can  do  this,  then  I  would  respectfully  suggest  that 
it  should  do  it.  Because,  otherwise,  the  unity 
seems  merely  stated  and  emphasized  ;  and  the 
problem  of  its  diverse  content  is  either  wholly 
neglected  or  hidden  under  a  confusion  of  fictions 
and  metaphors,  But  if  more  than  an  emphasis 
on  the  unity  is  meant,  that  more  is  even  positively 
objectionable.  For  while  the  diversity  is  slurred 
over,  instead  of  being  explained,  there  will  be  a 
negative  assertion  as  to  the  limits  within  which 
the  self's  true  unity  falls.  And  this  assertion  can- 
not stand  criticism.  And  lastly  the  relation  of 
the  self  to  its  contents  in  time  will  tend  to  become 
a  new  insoluble  enigma.     Monadism,  on  the  whole. 

*  The  attentive  reader  of  Lotze  must,  I  think,  have  found  it 
hard  to  discover  why  individual  selves  with  him  are  more  than 
phenomenal  adjectives.  For  myself  1  discern  plainly  his  resolve 
that  somehow  they  have  got  to  be  more.  But  1  do  not  find  that 
he  is  ever  willing  to  face  this  question  fairly. 


THE    REALITV    OF    SELF. 


I  19 


will  increase  and  will  add  to  the  difficulties  which 
already  exist,  and  it  will  not  supply  us  with  a  solu- 
tion of  any  single  one  of  them.  It  would  be  strange 
indeed  if  an  explanation  of  all  sides  of  our  puzzle 
were  found  in  mere  obstinate  emphasis  upon  one 
of  those  sides. 


And  with  this  result  I  will  bring  the  present 
chapter  to  a  close.  The  reader,  who  lias  followed  our 
discussions  up  to  this  point,  can,  if  he  pleases,  pursue 
the  detail  of  the  subject,  and  can  further  criticise  the 
claims  made  for  the  self's  reality.  But  if  he  will  drive 
home  the  objections  which  we  have  come  to  know 
in  principle,  the  conclusion  he  will  reach  is  assured 
already.  In  whatever  way  the  self  is  taken,  it  will 
prove  to  be' appearance.  It  cannot,  if  finite,  main- 
tain itself  against  external  relations.  For  these  will 
enter  its  essence,  and  so  ruin  its  independency. 
And,  apart  from  this  objection  in  the  case  of  its 
finitude,  the  self  is  in  any  case  unintelligible.  For, 
in  considering  it,  we  are  forced  to  transcend  mere 
feeling,  itself  not  satisfactory  ;  and  yet  we  can- 
not reach  any  defensible  thought,  any  intellectual 
principle,  by  which  it  is  possible  to  understand  how 
diversity  can  be  comprehended  in  unity.  But,  if 
we  cannot  understand  this,  and  if  whatever  way  we 
have  of  thinking  about  the  self  proves  full  of  incon- 
sistency, we  should  then  accept  what  must  follow. 
The  self  is  no  doubt  the  highest  form  of  experience 
which  we  have,  but,  for  all  that,  is  not  a  true  form. 
It  does  not  give  us  the  facts  as  they  are  in  reality  ; 
and,  as  it  gives  them,  they  are  appearance,  appear- 
ance and  error. 

And  one  of  the  reasons  why  this  result  is  not  ad- 
mitted on  all  sides,  seems  to  lie  in  that  great 
ambiguity  of  the  self  which  our  previous  chapter 
detailed.  Apparently  distinct,  this  phrase  wavers 
from  one  meaning  to  another,  is  applied  to  various 
objects,  and  in  argument  is  used  too  seldom  in  a 


I20 


APPEARANCE. 


well-defined  sense.  But  there  is  a  still  more  funda- 
mental aid  to  obscurity.  The  end  of  metaphysics 
is  to  understand  the  universe,  to  find  a  way  of 
thinking  about  facts  in  general  which  is  free  from 
contradiction.  But  how  few  writers  seem  to  trouble 
themselves  much  about  this  vital  issue.  Of  those  who 
take  their  principle  of  understanding  from  the  self, 
how  few  subject  that  principle  to  an  impartial 
scrutiny.  But  it  is  easy  to  argue  from  a  foregone 
alternative,  to  disprove  any  theory  which  loses  sight 
of  the  self,  and  then  to  offer  what  remains  as  the 
secret  of  the  universe — whether  what  remains  is 
thinkable  or  is  a  complex  which  refuses  to  be  under- 
stood. And  it  is  easy  to  survey  the  world  which  is 
selfless,  to  find  there  vanity  and  illusion,  and  then 
to  return  to  one's  self  into  congenial  darkness  and 
the  equivocal  consolation  of  some  psychological 
monster.  But,  if  the  object  is  to  understand,  there 
can  be  only  one  thing  which  we  have  to  consider. 
It  does  not  matter  from  what  source  our  principle  Is 
derived.  It  may  be  the  refutation  of  something 
else — it  Is  no  worse  for  that.  Or  it  may  be  a  re- 
sponse emitted  by  some  kind  of  internal  oracle,  and 
it  is  no  worse  for  that  But  for  metaphysics  a 
principle,  if  it  Is  to  stand  at  all,  must  stand  absolutely 
by  itself  While  wide  enough  to  cover  the  facts,  it 
must  be  able  to  be  thought  without  jarring  internally. 
It  is  this,  to  repeat  It  once  more,  on  which  every- 
thing turns.  The  diversity  and  the  unity  must  be 
brought  to  the  light,  and  the  principle  must  be  seen 
to  comprehend  these.  It  must  not  carry  us  away 
into  a  maze  of  relations,  relations  that  lead  to 
Illusory  terms,  and  terms  disappearing  into  endless 
relations.  But  the  self  Is  so  far  from  supplying 
such  a  principle,  that  It  seems,  where  not  hiding 
itself  In  obscurity,  a  mere  bundle  of  discrepancies. 
Our  search  has  conducted  us  again  not  to  reality  but 
mere  appearance. 


CHAPTER  XI. 


PHE  NOMENAL  ISM. 


Our  attempts,  so  far,  to  reduce  the  world's  diverse 
contents  to  unity  have  ended  in  failure.  Any  sort 
of  group  which  we  could  find,  whether  a  thing  or  a 
self,  proved  unable  to  stand  criticism.  And,  since 
it  seems  that  what  appears  must  somewhere  certainly 
be  one,  and  since  this  unity  is  not  to  be  discovered 
in  phenomena,  the  reality  threatens  to  migrate  to 
another  world  than  ours.  We  have  been  driven 
near  to  the  separation  of  appearance  and  reality  ; 
we  already  perhaps  contemplate  their  localization  in 
two  different  hemispheres — the  one  unknown  to  us 
and  real,  and  the  other  known  and  mere  appearance. 
But,  before  we  take  this  step,  1  will  say  a  few  words 
on  a  proposed  alternative,  stating  this  entirely  in 
my  own  way  and  so  as  to  suit  my  own  convenience. 
"  Why,"  it  may  be  said,  "  should  we  trouble  our- 
selves to  seek  for  a  unity  ?  Why  do  things  not  go 
on  very  well  as  they  are  ?  We  really  want  no  sub- 
stance or  activity,  or  anything  else  of  the  kind.  For  i 
phenomena  and  their  laws  are  all  that  science 
requires."  Such  a  view  maybe  called  Phenomenal- 
ism. It  is  superficial  at  its  best,  and  it  is  held  of 
course  with  varying  degrees  of  intelligence.  In  its 
most  consistent  form,  I  suppose,  it  takes  its  pheno- 
mena as  feelings  or  sensations.  These  with  their 
.relations  are  the  elements ;  and  the  laws  somewhere 
and  somehow  come  into  this  view.  And  against  its 
opponents  Phenomenalism  would  urge.  What  else 
exists  ?     "  Show  me  anything  real,"  it  would  argue, 


122 


APPEARANCE. 


"and  I  will  show  you  mere  presentation;  more  is 
not  to  be  discovered,  and  really  more  is  meaning- 
less. Things  and  selves  are  not  unities  in  any  sense 
whatever,  except  as  given  collections  or  arrange- 
ments of  such  presented  elements.  What  appears 
is.  as  a  matter  of  fact,  grouped  in  such  and  such 
manners.  And  then,  of  course,  there  are  the  laws. 
When  we  have  certain  things  given,  then  certain 
other  things  are  given  too  ;  or  we  know  that  certain 
other  occurrences  will  or  may  take  place.  There 
is  hence  nothing  but  events,  appearances  which 
happen,  and  the  ways  which  these  appearances  have 
of  happening.  And  how,  in  the  name  of  science, 
can  any  one  want  any  more  .''  " 

The  last  question  suggests  a  very  obvious  criti- 
cism. The  view  either  makes  a  claim  to  take 
account  of  all  the  facts,  or  it  makes  no  such  claim. 
In  the  latter  case  there  is  at  once  an  end  of  its 
pretensions.  But  in  the  former  case  it  has  to  meet 
this  fatal  objection.  Ail  the  ways  of  thinking  which 
introduce  an  unity  into  things,  into  the  world  or  the 
self —  and  there  clearly  is  a  good  deal  of  such 
thinking  on  hand — are  of  course  illusory.  But,  none 
the  less,  they  are  facts  entirely  undeniable.  And 
Phenomenalism  is  invited  to  take  some  account  of 
these  facts,  and  to  explain  how  on  its  principles 
their  existence  is  possible.  How,  for  example,  with 
only  such  elements  and  their  laws,  is  the  theory  of 
,  Phenomenalism  itself  a  possible  fact  ?  The  theory 
\  seems  an  unity  which,  if  it  were  true,  would  be  im- 
possible. And  an  objection  of  this  sort  has  a  very 
wide  range,  and  applies  to  a  considerable  area  of 
appearance.  But  I  am  not  going  to  ask  how 
Phenomenalism  is  prepared  to  reply.  1  will  simply 
say  that  this  one  objection,  to  those  who  understand, 
makes  an  end  of  the  business.  And  if  there  ever 
has  been  so  much  as  an  attempt  to  meet  this  fairly, 
it  has  escaped  my  notice.  We  may  be  sure  before- 
hand that  such  an  effort  must  be  wholly  futile. 


PHENOMENALISM. 


12: 


Thus,  without  our  entering  into  any  criticism  on 
the  positive  doctrine,  a  mere  reference  to  what  it 
must  admit,  and  yet  blindly  ignores,  is  a  sufficient 
refutation.  But  I  will  add  a  few  remarks  on  the 
inconsistencies  of  that  which  it  offers  us. 

What  it  states,  in  the  first  place,  as  to  its 
elements  and  their  relations,  is  unintelligible.  In 
actual  fact,  wherever  you  get  it,  these  distinctions 
appear  and  seem  even  to  be  necessary.  At  least 
I  have  no  notion  of  the  way  in  which  they  could  be 
dispensed  with.  But  if  so,  there  is  here  at  once  a 
diversity  in  unity  ;  we  have  somehow  together,  per- 
haps, several  elements  and  some  relations ;  and 
what  is  the  meaning  of  "  together,"  when  once 
distinctions  have  been  separated  ?  And  then  what 
sort  of  things  are  relations }  Can  you  have 
elements  which  are  free  from  them  even  internally  } 
And  are  relations  themselves  not  given  elements, 
another  kind  of  phenomena  ?  But,  if  so,  what  is 
the  relation  between  the  first  kind  and  the  second 
(Cf.  Chapter  iii.)  ?  Or,  if  that  question  ends  in 
sheer  nonsense,  who  is  responsible  for  the  nonsense.' 
Consider,  for  instance,  any  fact  of  sense,  it  does 
not  matter  what ;  and  let  Phenomenalism  attempt 
to  state  clearly  what  it  means  by  its  elements  and 
relations  ;  let  it  tell  us  whether  these  two  sides  are 
in  relation  with  one  another,  or,  if  not  that,  what 
else  is  the  case.     But  I  will  pass  to  another  point. 

An  obvious  question  arises  as  to  events  past  and 
future.  If  these,  and  their  relations  to  the  present, 
are  not  to  be  real  and  in  some  sense  to  exist — then 
difficulties  arise  into  which  I  will  not  enter.  But, 
if  past  and  future  (or  either  of  them)  are  in  any 
sense  real,  then,  in  the  first  place,  the  unity  of  this 
series  will  be  something  inexplicable.  And,  in  the 
second  place,  a  reality,  not  presented  and  not  given 
(and  even  the  past  is  surely  not  given),  was  pre- 
cisely that  against  which  Phenomenalism  set  its 
face.     This  is  another  inconsistency. 


i^- 


APPEARANCE. 


Let  us  go  on  to  consider  the  question  as  to  identity, 
fhis  Phenomenalism  should  deny.Jaecauseidentity 
1^  a  rn^l  union  of  fhf-  djyf^rtp-  But  change^is  not  to 
be  denied,  for  obviously  it  must  be  there  when 
something  happens.  Now,  if  there  is  change,  there 
is  by  consequence  something  which  changes.  But 
if  it  changes,  it  is  the  same  throughout  a  diversity. 
It  is,  in  other  words,  a  real  unity,  a  concrete  uni- 
versal. Take,  for  example,  the  fact  of  motion  ; 
evidently  here  something  alters  its  place.  Hence  a 
variety  of  places,  whatever  that  means — in  any  case 
a  variety — must  be  predicated  of  one  something.  If 
so,  we  have  at  once  on  our  hands  the  One  and  the 
Many,  and  otherwise  our  theory  declines  to  deal 
with  ordinary  fact. 

In  brief,  identity— being  that  which  the  doctrine 
excluded — is  essential  to  its  being.  And  now  how 
far  is  this  to  go  }  Is  the  series  of  phenomena,  with 
its  differences,  one  series .''  If  it  Is  not  one,  why 
treat  it  as  if  it  were  so  ?  If  it  is  one,  then  here 
indeed  is  an  unity  which  gives  us  pause.  Again,  are 
the  elements  ever  permanent  and  remaining  identical 
from  one  time  to  another  .•'  But,  whether  they  are 
or  are  not  identical,  how  are  facts  to  be  explained  .'' 
Suppose,  in  the  first  place,  that  we  do  have  identical 
elements,  surviving  amid  change  and  the  play  of 
variety.  Here  are  metaphysical  reals,  raising  the 
old  questions  we  have  been  discussing  through  this 
Book.  But  perhaps  nothing  is  really  permanent 
except  the  laws.  The  problem  of  change  is  given 
up,  and  we  fall  back  upon  our  laws,  persisting  and 
appearing  in  successions  of  fleeting  elements.  If  so, 
phenomena  seem  now  to  have  become  temporal 
illustrations  of  laws. 

And  it  is  perhaps  time  to  ask  a  question  con- 
cerning the  nature  of  these  last-mentioned  creatures. 
Are  they  permanent  real  essences,  visible  from  time 
to  time  in  their  fleeting  illustrations  .''  If  so,  once 
more   Phenomenalism    has   adored   blindly  what    it 


rHENOMENALlSM. 


125 


rejected.  And,  of  course,  the  relations  of  these 
essences — the  one  to  the  other,  and  each  to  the 
phenomena  which  in  some  way  seem  its  adject- 
ives— take  us  back  to  those  difficulties  which 
proved  too  hard  for  us.  But  I  presume  that  the 
reality  of  the  laws  must  be  denied,  or  denied,  that 
is,  not  quite,  but  with  a  reservation.  The  laws  are 
hypothetical  ;  they  are  in  themselves  but  possibilities, 
and  actual  only  when  found  in  real  presentation. 
Apart  from  this,  and  as  mere  laws,  they  are  con- 
nections between  terms  which  do  not  exist  ;  and,  if 
so,  as  connections,  they  are  not  strictly  anything 
actual.  In  short,  just  as  the  elements  were  nothing! 
outside  of  presentation,  so  again,  outside  of  preserw 
tation,  the  laws  really  are  nothing.  And  in  pre' 
sentation  then — what  is  either  side,  the  elements  or 
the  laws,  but  an  unreal  and  quite  indefensible 
thought.''  It  seems  that  we  can  say  of  them  only 
that  we  do  not  know  what  they  are  ;  and  all  that  we 
can  be  certain  of  is  this,  that  they  are  7ioi  what  we 
know,  namely,  given  phenomena. 

And  here  we  may  end.  The  view  has  started 
with  mere  presentation.  It,  of  course,  is  forced  to 
transcend  this,  and  it  has  done  so  ignorantly  and 
blindly.  A  little  criticism  has  driven  it  back,  and 
has  left  it  with  an  universe,  which  must  either 
be  distinctions  within  one  presentation,  or  else 
mere  nonsense.  And  then  these  distinctions  them- 
selves are  quite  indefensible.  If  you  admit  them, 
you  have  to  deal  with  the  metaphysical  problem  of 
the  Many  in  One ;  and  you  cannot  admit  them,  be- 
cause clearly  they  are  not  given  and  presented,  but 
at  least  more  or  less  made.  And  what  it  must  come 
to  is  that  Phenomenalism  ends  in  this  dilemma.  It 
must  either  keep  to  the  moment's  presentation,  and 
must  leave  there  the  presented  entirely  as  it  is 
given — and,  if  so,  then  surely  there  could  be  no 
more  science;  or  it  must  "become  transcendent" 
(as  the  phrase  goes),  and  launch  out  into  a  sea  of 


1 26  APPEARANCE. 

more  preposterous  inconsistencies  than  are  perhaps 
to  be  found  in  any  other  attempt  at  metaphysics. 
As  a  working  point  of  view,  directed  and  confined 
to  the  ascertainment  of  some  special  branch  of  truth, 
Phenomenalism  is  of  course  useful  and  is  indeed 
quite  necessary.  And  the  metaphysician,  who 
attacks  it  when  following  its  own  business,  is  likely 
to  fare  badly.  But  when  Phenomenalism  loses  its 
head  and,  becoming  blatant,  steps  forward  as  a 
theory  of  first  principles,  then  it  is  really  not  re- 
spectable. The  best  that  can  be  said  of  its  preten- 
sions is  that  they  are  ridiculous. 


CHAPTER    XII. 


THINGS  IN  THEMSEL  VES. 


We  have  found,  so  far,  that  we  have  not  been  able 
to  arrive  at  reality.  The  various  ways,  in  which 
things  have  been  taken  up,  have  all  failed  to  give 
more  than  mere  appearance.  Whatever  we  have 
tried  has  turned  out  something  which,  on  investiga- 
tion, has  been  proved  to  contradict  itself.  But  that, 
which  does  not  attain  to  internal  unity,  has  clearly 
stopped  short  of  genuine  reality.  And,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  sit  down  contented  is  impossible,  unless, 
that  is,  we  are  resolved  to  put  up  with  mere  confu- 
sion. For  to  transcend  what  is  given  is  clearly 
obligatory,  if  we  are  to  think  at  all  and  to  have 
any  views  whatever.  But,  the  deliverance  of  the 
moment  once  left  behind,  we  have  succeeded  in 
meeting  with  nothing  that  holds  together.  Every 
view  has  been  seen  only  to  furnish  appearance,  and 
the  reality  has  escaped.  It  lias  baffled  us  so  con- 
stantly, so  persistently  retreated,  that  in  the  end  we 
are  forced  to  set  it  down  as  unattainable.  It  seems 
to  have  been  discovered  to  reside  in  another  world 
than  ours. 

We  have  here  reached  a  familiar  way  of  regard- 
ing the  universe,  a  doctrine  held  with  very  different 
degrees  of  comprehension.  The  universe,  upon 
this  view  (whether  it  understands  itself  or  not),  falls 
apart  into  two  regions,  we  may  call  them  two  hemi- 
spheres. One  of  these  is  the  world  of  experience 
and  knowledge  —  in  every  sense  without  reality. 
The  other  is  the  kingdom  of  reality — without  either 


128 


APPEARANCE. 


knowledge  or  experience.  Or  we  have  on  one  side 
phenomena,  in  other  words,  things  as  they  are  to  us, 
and  ourselves  so  far  as  we  are  anything  to  our- 
selves ;  while  on  the  other  side  are  Things  as  they 
are  in  themselves  and  as  they  do  not  appear  ;  or,  if 
we  please,  we  may  call  this  side  the  Unknowable. 
And  our  attitude  towards  such  a  divided  universe 
varies  a  good  deal.  We  may  be  thankful  to  be  rid 
of  that  which  is  not  relative  to  our  affairs,  and  which 
cannot  in  any  way  concern  us  ;  and  we  may  be  glad 
that  the  worthless  is  thrown  over  the  wall.  Or  we 
may  regret  that  Reality  is  too  good  to  be  known, 
and  from  the  midst  of  our  own  confusion  may  revere 
the  other  side  in  its  inaccessible  grandeur.  We  may 
even  naively  felicitate  ourselves  on  total  estrange- 
ment, and  rejoice  that  at  last  utter  ignorance  has 
removed  every  scruple  which  impeded  religion. 
Where  we  know  nothing  we  can  have  no  possible 
objection  to  worship.' 

This  view  is  popular,  and  to  some  extent  is  even 
plausible.  It  is  natural  to  feel  that  the  best  and  the 
highest  is  unknowable,  in  the  sense  of  being  some- 
thing which  our  knowledge  cannot  master.  And 
this  is  probably  all  that  for  most  minds  the  doctrine 
signifies.  But  of  course  this  is  not  what  it  says, 
nor  what  it  means,  when  it  has  any  definite  meaning. 
For  it  does  not  teach  that  our  knowledge  of  reality 
is  imperfect ;  it  asserts  that  it  does  not  exist,  and 
that  wc  have  no  knowledge  at  all,  however  imper- 
fect. There  is  a  hard  and  fast  line,  with  our  ap- 
prehension on  the  one  side  and  the  Thing  on  the 
other  side,  and  the  two  hopelessly  apart.  This 
is  the  doctrine,  and  its  plausibility  vanishes  before 
criticism. 

'  I  do  not  wish  to  be  irreverent,  but  Mr.  Spencer's  auitude 
towards  his  Unknowable  strikes  me  as  a  pleasantry,  the  point  of 
which  lies  in  its  unconsciousness.  It  seems  a  proposal  to  take 
something  for  God  simply  and  solely  because  we  do  not  know 
what  the  devil  it  can  be.  But  I  am  far  from  attributing  to  Mr. 
I  Spencer  any  one  consistent  view. 


THINGS    IN    THEMSELVES. 


129 


Its  absurdity  may  be  shown  in  several  ways. 
Tile  Unknowable  must,  of  course,  be  prepared 
either  to  deserve  its  name  or  not.  But,  if  it  actually 
were  not  knowable,  we  could  not  know  that  such  a 
thing  even  existed.  It  would  be  much  as  if  we  said, 
"  Since  all  my  faculties  are  totally  confined  to  my 
garden,  I  cannot  tell  if  the  roses  next  door  are  in 
flower."  And  this  seems  inconsistent.  And  we 
may  push  the  line  of  attack  which  we  mentioned  in 
the  last  chapter.  If  the  theory  really  were  true, 
then  it  must  be  impossible.  There  is  no  reconciling 
our  knowledge  of  its  truth  with  that  general  condi- 
tion which  exists  if  it  is  true.  But  I  propose  to 
adopt  another  way  of  criticism,  which  perhaps  may 
be  plainer. 

I  will  first  make  a  remark  as  to  the  plurality 
involved  in  Things  in  themselves.  If  this  is  meant, 
then  within  their  secluded  world  we  have  a  long 
series  of  problems.  Their  diversity  and  their  rela- 
tions bring  us  back  to  those  very  difficulties  which 
we  were  endeavouring  to  avoid.  And  it  seems  clear 
that,  if  we  wish  to  be  consistent,  the  plural  must  be 
dropped.  Hence  in  future  we  shall  confine  our- 
selves to  the  Thing  in  itself. 

We  have  got  this  reality  on  one  side  and  our 
appearances  on  the  other,  and  we  are  naturally  led  to 
enquire  about  their  connection.  Are  they  related,  I 
the  one  to  the  other,  or  not.''  If  they  are  related,^ 
and  if  in  any  way  the  appearances  are  made  the 
adjectives  of  reality,  then  the  Thing  has  become 
qualilied  by  them.  It  is  qualified,  but  on  what 
principle  ?  That  is  what  we  do  not  know.  We 
have  in  effect  every  unsolved  problem  which  vexed 
us  before ;  and  we  have,  besides,  this  whole  confu- 
sion now  predicated  of  the  Thing,  no  longer,  there- 
fore, something  by  itself  But  this  perplexed 
attribution  was  precisely  that  which  the  doctrine 
intended  to  avoid.  We  must  therefore  deny  any 
relation  of  our  appearances  to  the   Thing.      But,   if 

A.  R.  K 


I30 


APPEARANCE. 


SO,  Other  troubles  vex  us.  Either  our  Thing  has 
quahties,  or  it  has  not.  If  it  has  them,  then  within 
itself  the  same  puzzles  break  out  which  we  intended 
to  leave  behind, — to  make  a  prey  of  phenomena  and 
to  rest  contented  with  their  ruin.  So  we  must 
correct  ourselves  and  assert  that  the  Thing  is 
unqualified.  But,  if  so,  we  are  destroyed  with  no 
less  certainty.  For  a  Thing  without  qualities  is 
clearly  not  real.  It  is  mere  Being,  or  mere  No- 
thing, according  as  you  take  it  simply  for  what  it  is, 
or  consider  also  that  which  it  means  to  be.  Such 
an  abstraction  is  palpably  of  no  use  to  us. 

And.  if  we  regard  the  situation  from  the  side  of 
phenomena,  it  is  not  more  encouraging.  We  must 
take  appearances  in  connection  with  reality,  or  not. 
In  the  former  case,  they  are  not  rendered  one  whit 
less  confused.  They  offer  precisely  the  old  jungle 
in  which  no  way  could  be  found,  and  which  is  not 
cleared  by  mere  attribution  to  a  Thing  in  itself. 
But,  if  we  deny  the  connection  of  phenomena  with 
the  Real,  our  condition  is  not  improved.  Either 
we  possess  now  two  realms  of  confusion  and  dis- 
order, existing  side  by  side,  or  the  one  above  the 
other.  And.  in  this  case,  the  "other  world"  of  the 
Thing  in  itself  only  serves  to  reduplicate  all  that 
troubles  us  here.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  if  we 
/  suppose  the  Thing  to  be  unqualified,  it  still  gives  us 
no  assistance.  Everything  in  our  concrete  world 
remains  the  same,  and  the  separate  existence  some- 
where of  this  wretched  abstraction,  serves  us  only 
^as  a  poor  and  irrelevant  excuse  for  neglecting  our 
own  concerns. 

And  I  will  allow  myself  to  dwell  on  this  last 
feature  of  the  case.  The  appearances  after  all, 
being  what  we  e.xperience,  must  be  what  matters  for 
us.  They  are  surely  the  one  thing  which,  from  the 
nature  of  the  case,  can  possess  human  value. 
Surely,  the  moment  we  understand  what  we  mean 
by  our  words,  the  Thing  in  itself  becomes  utterly 


THINGS    IN    THEMSELVES. 


13' 


I 


worthless  and  devoid  of  all  interest.  And  we  dis- 
cover a  state  of  mind  which  would  be  ridiculous  to 
a  degree,  if  it  had  not  unfortunately  a  serious  side. 
It  is  contended  that  contradictions  in  phenomena 
are  something  quite  in  order,  so  long  as  the  Thing 
in  itself  is  not  touched.  That  is  to  say  that  every- 
thing, which  we  know  and  can  experience,  does  not 
matter,  however  distracted  its  case,  and  that  this 
purely  irrelevant  ghost  is  the  ark  of  salvation  to  be 
preserved  at  all  costs.  But  how  it  can  be  anything 
to  us  whether  something  outside  our  knowledge 
contradicts  itself  or  not — is  simply  unintelligible. 
What  is  too  visible  is  our  own  readiness  to  sacrifice 
everything  which  possesses  any  possible  claim  on 
us.  And  what  is  to  be  inferred  is  our  confusion, 
and  our  domination  by  a  theory  which  lives  only  in 
the  world  of  misunderstanding. 

We  have  seen  that  the  doctrine  of  a  Thing  in 
itself  is  absurd.  A  reality  of  this  sort  is  assuredly 
not  something  un verifiable.  It  has  on  the  contrary 
a  nature  which  is  fully  transparent,  as  a  false  and 
empty  abstraction,  whose  generation  is  plain.  We 
found  that  reality  was  not  the  appearances,  and 
that  result  must  hold  good  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
reality  is  certainly  not  something  else  which  is 
unable  to  appear.  For  that  is  sheer  self-contradic- 
tion, which  is  plausible  only  so  long  as  we  do  not 
realize  its  meaning.  The  assertion  of  a  reality 
falling  outside  knowledge,  is  quite  nonsensical. 

And  so  this  attempt  to  shelve  our  problems,  this 
proposal  to  take  no  pains  about  what  are  only 
phenomena,  has  broken  down.  It  was  a  vain 
notion  to  set  up  an  idol  apart,  to  dream  that  facts 
for  that  reason  had  ceased  to  be  facts,  and  had 
somehow  become  only  something  else.  And  this 
false  idea  is  an  illusion  which  we  should  attempt  to 
clear  out  of  our  minds  once  for  all.  We  shall  have 
hereafter  to  enquire  into  the  nature  of  appearance ; 
but  for  the  present  we  may  keep  a   fast  hold  upon 


132 


APPEARANCE. 


this,  that  appearances  exist.  That  is  absolutely 
certain,  and  to  deny  it  is  nonsense.  And  whatever 
exists  must  belong  to  reality.  That  is  also  quite 
certain,  and  its  denial  once  more  is  self-contradic- 
tory. Our  appearances  no  doubt  may  be  a  beggarly 
show,  and  their  nature  to  an  unknown  extent  may  be 
something  which,  as  it  is,  is  not  true  of  reality. 
That  is  one  thing,  and  it  is  quite  another  thing  to 
speak  as  if  these  facts  had  no  actual  existence,  or 
as  if  there  could  be  anything  but  reality  to  which 
they  might  belong.  And  I  must  venture  to  repeat 
that  such  an  idea  would  be  sheer  nonsense.  What 
appears,  for  that  sole  reason,  most  indubitably  is  ; 
and  there  is  no  possibility  of  conjuring  its  being 
away  from  it.  And,  though  we  ask  no  question  at 
present  as  to  the  exact  nature  of  reality,  we  may  be 
certain  that  it  cannot  be  less  than  appearances  ;  we 
may  be  sure  that  the  least  of  these  in  some  way  con- 
tributes to  make  it  what  it  is.  And  the  whole  result 
of  this  Book  may  be  summed  up  in  a  few  words. 
Everything  so  far,  which  we  have  seen,  has  turned 
out  to  be  appearance.  It  is  that,  which,  taken  as  it 
stands,  proves  inconsistent  with  itself,  and  for  this 
reason  cannot  be  true  of  the  real.  But  to  deny  its 
existence  or  to  divorce  it  from  reality  is  out  of  the 
question.  For  it  has  a  positive  character  which  is 
indubitable  fact,  and.  however  much  this  fact  may 
be  pronounced  appearance,  it  can  have  no  place  in 
whicli  to  live  except  reality.  And  reality,  set  on 
one  side  and  apart  from  all  appearance,  would 
assuredly  be  nothing.  Hence  what  is  certain  is 
that,  in  some  way,  these  inseparables  are  joined. 
This  is  the  positive  result  which  has  emerged  Jrom 
our  discussion.  Our  failure  so  far  lies  in  this,  that 
we  have  not  found  the  way  in  which  appearances 
can  belong  to  reality.  And  to  this  further  task  we 
must  now  address  ourselves,  with  however  little 
hope  of  more  than  partial  satisfaction. 


BOOK   II. 
REALITY. 


«33 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


THE  GENERAL  NATURE  OF  REALITY. 


The  result  of  our  First  Book  has  been  mainly  nega- 
tive. We  have  taken  up  a  number  of  ways  of  re- 
garding reality,  and  we  have  found  that  they  all 
arc  vitiated  by  self-discrepancy.  The  reality  can 
accept  not  one  of  these  predicates,  at  least  in  the 
character  in  which  so  far  they  have  come.  We  cer- 
tainly ended  with  a  reflection  which  promised  some- 
thing positive.  Whatever  is  rejected  as  appearance 
is,  for  that  very  reason,  no  mere  nonentity.  It 
cannot  bodily  be  shelved  and  merely  got  rid  of,  and, 
therefore,  since  it  must  fall  somewhere,  it  must 
belong  to  reality.  To  take  it  as  existing  somehow 
and  somewhere  in  the  unreal,  would  surely  be  quite 
meaningless.  F"or  reality  must  own,  and  it  cannot  Jf 
be  Jess  than  appearance.  That  is  the  one  positive/ 
result  which,  .so  far,  we  have  reached.  But  as  to' 
the  character  which,  otherwise,  the  real  possesses, 
we  at  present  know  nothing  ;  and  a  further  know- 
ledge is  what  we  must  aim  at  through  the  remainder 
of  our  search.  The  present  Book,  to  some  extent, 
falls  into  two  divisions.  The  first  of  these  deals 
mainly  with  the  general  character  of  reality,  and 
with  the  defence  of  this  against  a  number  of  objec- 
tions. Then  from  this  basis,  in  the  second  place, 
1  shall  go  on  to  consider  mainly  some  special  fea- 
tures. But  I  must  admit  that  I  have  kept  to  no 
strict  principle  of  division.  I  have  really  observed 
no  rule  of  progress,  except  to  get  forward  in  the 
best  way  that  I  can. 

>» 


136 


REALITY. 


At  the  beginning  of  our  inquiry  into  the  nature 
of  the  real  we  encounter,  of  course,  a  general  doubt 
or  denial.'  To  know  the  truth,  we  shall  be  told, 
is  impossible,  or  is,  at  all  events,  wholly  impractic- 
able. We  cannot  have  positive  knowledge  about 
first  principles  ;  and,  if  we  could  possess  it,  we  should 
not  know  when  actually  we  had  got  it.  What,  is 
denied  is,  in  short,  the  existence  of  a  criterion,  *  I 
shall,  later  on,  in  Chapter  xxvii.,  have  to  deal  more 
fully  with  the  objections  of  a  thorough-going  scep- 
ticism, and  I  will  here  confine  myself  to  what  seems 
requisite  for  the  present. 

Is  there  an  absolute  criterion  ?  This  question, 
to  my  mind,  is  answered  by  a  second  question : 
How  otherwise  ghnnlfl  wp  h^  flh|e.  tn  say  anything 
at  a]l .about  appearance?  For  through  the  last 
Book,  the  reader  will  remember,  we  were  for  the 
most  part  criticising.  We  were  judging  phenomena 
and  were  condemning  them,  and  throughout  we  pro- 
ceeded as  if  the  self-contradictory  could  not  be  real. 
But  this  was  surely  to  have  and  to  apply  an  ab- 
solute criterion.  For  consider  :  you  can  scarcely 
propose  to  be  quite  passive  when  presented  with 
statements  about  reality.  You  can  hardly  take  the 
position  of  admitting  any  and  every  nonsense  to 
be  truth,  truth  absolute  and  entire,  at  least  so  far 
as  you  know.  For,  if  you  think  at  all  so  as  to  dis- 
criminate between  truth  and  falsehood,  you  will 
find  that  you  cannot  accept  open  self-contradiction. 
Hence  to  think  is  to  judge,  and  to  judge  is  to 
criticise,  and  to  criticise  is  to  use  a  criterion  of 
reality.  And  surely  to  doubt  this  would  be  mere 
blindness  or  confused  self-deception.  But,  if  so,  it 
is  clear  that,  in  rejecting  the  inconsistent  as  appear- 
ance, we  are  applying  a  positive  knowledge  of  the 
ultimate  nature  of  things.  Ultimate  reality  is  such 
that  it  does  not  contradict  itself;  here  is  an  abso- 
lute criterion.  And  it  is  proved  absolute  by  the 
'  See  the  Introduction,  p.  z. 


THE  GENERAL  NATURE  OF  REALITY. 


137 


fact  that,  either  in  end 


to 


eavou 

doubt    it, 


rincT  to  de 


we 


ny 
tacitly 


It,  or  even 
assume    its 


in   attempting 
validity. 

One  of  these  essays  in  delusion  may  be  noticed 
briefly  in  passing.  We  may  be  told  that  our  cri- 
terion has  been  developed  by  experience,  and  that 
therefore  at  least  it  may  not  be  absolute.  But  why 
anything  should  be  weaker  for  having  been  de- 
veloped is,  in  the  first  place,  not  obvious.  And, 
in  the  second  place,  the  whole  doubt,  when  under- 
stood, destroys  itself.  For  the  alleged  origin  of  our 
criterion  is  delivered  to  us  by  knowledge  which 
rests  throughout  on  its  application  as  an  absolute 
test.  And  what  can  be  more  irrational  than  to  try 
to  prove  that  a  principle  is  doubtful,  when  the  proof 
through  every  step  rests  on  its  unconditional  truth  ? 
It  would,  of  course,  not  be  irrational  to  take  one's 
stand  on  this  criterion,  to  use  it  to  produce  a  con- 
clusion hostile  to  itself,  and  to  urge  that  therefore 
our  whole  knowledge  is  self-destructive,  since  it 
essentially  drives  us  to  what  we  cannot  accept.  But 
this  is  not  the  result  which  our  supposed  objector 
has  in  view,  or  would  welcome.  He  makes  no 
attempt  to  show  in  general  that  a  psychological 
growth  is  in  any  way  hostile  to  metaphysical  validity. 
And  he  is  not  prepared  to  give  up  his  own  psycho- 
logical knowledge,  which  knowledge  plainly  is  ruined 
if  the  criterion  is  not  absolute.  The  doubt  is  seen, 
when  we  reflect,  to  be  founded  on  that  which  it 
endeavours  to  question.  And  it  has  but  blindly 
borne  witness  to  the  absolute  certainty  of  our  know- 
ledge about  reality. 

Thus  we  possess  a  criterion,  and  our  criterion  is 
supreme.  1  do  not  mean  to  deny  that  we  might 
have  several  standards,  giving  us  sundry  pieces  of 
information  about  the  nature  of  things.  But,  be 
that  as  it  may,  we  still  have  an  over-ruling  test  of 
truth,  and  the  various  standards  (if  they  e.xist)  are 
certainly  subordinate.     This  at  once  becomes  evid- 


'38 


REALITY. 


ent,  for  we  cannot  refuse  to  bring  such  standards 
together,  and  to  ask  if  they  agree.  Or.  at  least,  if 
a  doubt  is  suggested  as  to  their  consistency,  each 
with  itself  and  with  the  rest,  we  are  compelled,  so 
to  speak,  to  assume  jurisdiction.  And  if  they  were 
guilty  of  self-contradiction,  when  examined  or  com- 
pared, we  should  condemn  them  as  appearance. 
But  we  could  not  do  that  if  they  were  not  subject 
all  to  one  tribunal.  And  hence,  as  we  find  nothing 
not  subordinate  to  the  test  of  self-consistency,  we 
are  forced  to  set  that  down  as  supreme  and  absol- 
ute. 

But  it  may  b'e  said  that  this  supplies  us  with  no 
real  information.  If  we  think,  then  certainly  we 
are  not  allowed  to  be  inconsistent,  and  it  is  admitted 
that  this  test  is  unconditional  and  absolute.  But  it 
will  be  urged  that,  for  knowledge  about  any  matter, 
we  require  something  more  than  a  bare  negation. 
The  ultimate  reality  {we  are  agreed)  does  not  per- 
mit self-contradiction,  but  a  prohibition  or  an  absence 
(we  shall  be  told)  by  itself  does  not  amount  to 
positive  knowledge.  The  denial  of  inconsistency, 
therefore,  does  not  predicate  any  positive  quality. 
But  such  an  objection  is  untenable.  It  may  go  so 
far  as  to  assert  that  a  bare  denial  is  possible,  that 
we  may  reject  a  predicat"though  we  stand  on  no 
positive  basis,  and  though  there  is  nothing  special 
which  serves  to  reject.  This  error  has  been  refuted 
in  my  Principles  of  Logic  (Book  I.,  Chapter  iii.),' 
and  I  do  not  propose  to  discuss  it  here.  I  will  pass 
to  another  sense  in  which  the  objection  may  seem 
more  plausible.  The  criterion,  it  may  be  urged,  in 
itself  is  doubtless  positive  ;  but,  for  our  knowledge 
and  in  effect,  is  merely  negative.  And  it  gives  us 
therefore  no  information  at  all  about  reality,  for, 
although  knowledge  is  there,  it  cannot  be  brought 
out.     The  criterion  is  a  basis,  which  serves  as  the 

'  The  word   "not"  here,  on   p.  120,  line  12,  is  an  error,  and 
should  be  struck  out. 


THE   GENERAL   NATURE   OF    REALITY. 


139 


h 


I 


foundation  of  denial  ;  but,  since  this  basis  cannot 
be  exposed,  we  are  but  able  to  stand  on  it  and 
unable  to  see  it.  And  it  hence,  in  effect,  tells  us 
nothinsjf,  thouijh  there  are  assertions  which  it  does 
not  allow  us  to  venture  on.  This  objection,  when 
stated  in  such  a  form,  may  seem  plausible,  and  there 
is  a  sense  in  which  I  am  prepared  to  admit  that  it 
is  valid.  If  by  the  nature  of  reality  we  understand 
its  full  nature,  I  am  not  contending  that  this  in  a 
complete  form  is  knowable.  But  that  is  very  far 
from  being  the  point  here  at  issue.  For  the  objec- 
tion denies  that  we  have  a  standard  which  gives 
any  positive  knowledge,  af/y  information,  complete 
or  incomplete,  about  the  genuine  reality.  And  this 
dental  assuredly  is  mistaken. 

The  objection  admits  that  we  know  what  reality 
/ioes,  but  it  refuses  to  allow  us  any  understanding 
of  what  reality  is.  The  standard  (it  is  agreed)  both 
exists  and  possesses  a  positive  character,  and  it  is 
agreed  that  this  character  rejects  inconsistency.  It 
is  admitted  that  we  know  this,  and  the  point  at  issue 
is  whether  such  knowledge  supplies  any  positive 
information  And  to  my  mind  this  question  seems 
not  hard  to  answer.  For  I  cannot  see  how,  when 
I  observe  a  thing  at  work^I  am  to  stand  there  and  j 
to  insist  that  1  know  notlmig  of  its  nature.  I  fail/ 
to  perceive  how  a  function  is  nothing  at  all,  or  how 
i(  does  not  positively  qualify  that  to  which  I  attri- 
bute it.  To  know  only  so  much,  I  admit,  may  very 
possibly  be  useless ;  it  may  leave  us  without  the 
information  which  we  desire  most  to  obtain  ;  but, 
for  all  that,  it  is  not  total  ignorance. 
I  Our  standard  denies  inconsistency,  and  therefore/ 
'asserts  consistency.  If  we  can  be  sure  that  the 
inconsistent  is  unreal,  we  must,  logically,  be  just  as 
sure  that  the  reality  is  consistent.  The  question 
is  solely  as  to  the  meaning  to  be  given  to  con- 
sistency. We  have  now  seen  that  it  is  not  the  bare 
exclusion  of  discord,  for  that  is  merely  our  abstrac- 


140 


REALITY. 


tion,  and  is  otherwise  nothinor.  And  our  result,  so 
(ar,  is  this.  Realfty  is  known  to  possess  a  positive 
character,  but  this  character  is  at  present  determined 
only  as  that  which  excludes  contradiction. 

But  we  may  make  a  further  advance.  We  saw 
(in  the  preceding  chapter)  that  all  appearance  must 
belong  to  reality.  For  what  appears  is,  and  what- 
ever is  cannot  fall  outside  the  real.  And  we  may 
now  combine  this  result  with  the  conclusion  just 
reached.  We  may  say  that  everything,  which 
appears,  is  somehow  real  in  such  a  way  as  to  be 
self-consistent.  The  character  of  the  real  is  to 
possess  everything  phenomenal  in  a  harmonious 
form. 

I  will  repeat  the  same  truth  in  other  words. 
Reality  is  one  in  this  sense  that  it  has  a  positive 
nature  exclusive  of  discord,  a  nature  which  must 
hold  throughout  everj'thing  that  is  to  be  real.  Its 
diversity  can  be  diverse  only  so  far  as  not  to  clash, 
and  what  seems  otherwise  anywhere  cannot  be  real. 
And,  from  the  other  side,  everything  which  appears 
must  be  real.  Appearance  must  belong  to  reality, 
and  it  must  therefore  beconcordant  and  other  than 
it  seems.  The  bewildering  mass  of  phenomenal 
diversity  must  hence  somehow  be  at  unity  and  self- 
consistent  ;  for  it  cannot  be  elsewhere  than  in  reality, 
and  reality  excludes  discord.  Or  again  we  may  put 
it  so  :  the  real  is  individual.  It  is  one  in  the  sense 
that  its  positive  character  embraces  all  differences 
in  an  inclusive  harmony.  And  this  knowledge, 
poor  as  it  may  be,  is  certainly  marc  than  bare 
negation  or  simple  ignorance.  So  far  as  it  goes, 
it  gives  us  positive  news  about  absolute  reality. 

Let  us  try  to  carry  this  conclusion  a  step  farther 
on.  We  know  that  the  real  is  one  ;  but  its  oneness, 
so  far,  is  ambiguous.  Is  it  one  system,  possessing 
diversity  as  an  adjective  ;  or  is  its  consistency,  on 
the  other  hand,  an  attribute  of  independent  realities  ? 


THE  GENERAL  NATURE  OF  REALITY. 

We  have  to  ask,  in  short,  if  a  plurality  of  reals  is 
possible,  and  if  these  can  merely  co-exist  so  as  not 
to  be  discrepant  ?  Or  the  same  question  might  be 
raised  in  another  form.  We  might  enquire  if  in  one 
experience  there  can  be  many  qualities,  each  self- 
subsistent  and  all  different  apart  from  distinction, 
We  have  already  disposed  of  this  matter  in  our 
second,  third,  and  tenth  chapters,  but  I  will  repeat 
some  part  of  the  discussion  here. 

A  plurality  of  reals  would  mean  a  number  of 
beings  not  dependent  on  each  other.  On  the  one 
hand  they  would  possess  somehow  the  phenomenal 
diversity,  for  that  possession,  we  have  seen,  is  quite 
■essential.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  they  would  be 
free  from  external  interference  and  from  inner  dis- 
crepancy. We  have  to  ask  if  such  a  state  of  things 
is  possible,  but  after  the  discussions  of  our  I'^irst 
Book  the  question  hardly  needs  an  answer.  For  the 
internal  states  of  each  real  give  rise  to  hopeless 
difficulties.  And,  even  if  it  were  possible  to  deal 
with  these,  yet  the  plurality  of  the  rt;als  cannot  be 
reconciled  with  their  independence.  I  will  briefly 
point  out  once  more  the  discrepancy  which  enters 
into  them  from  what  we  may  call  their  external 
aspect 

Standing  upon  this  aspect,  we  urge  at  once  that 
plurality  must  contradict  independence.  If  the 
beings  are  not  in  relation,  they  cannot  be  many  ; 
J>ut  if  they  are  in  relation,  they  cease  forthwith  to 
fce  absolute.  For,  on  the  one  hand,  plurality  has 
no  meaning,  unless  the  units  are  somehow  taken 
together,  if  you  abolish  and  remove  all  relations, 
there  seems  no  sense  left  in  which  you  can  speak 
■of  plurality.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  relations  de- 
stroy the  reals'  self-dependence.  For  it  is  impos- 
sible to  treat  relations  as  ailjectives,  falling  simply 
inside  the  many  beings.  And  it  is  impossible  to  take 
them  as  falling  outside  somewhere  in  a  sort  of  unreal 
void,  which  makes  no  dift'erence  to  anything.    Hence 


142 


REALITY. 


(as  we  have  seen  in  our  First  Book)  the  essence  of 
the  related  terms  is  carried  beyond  their  proper 
selves  by  means  of  their  relations.  And,  again,  the 
relations  themselves  must  belong  to  a  larger  reality. 
To  stand  in  a  relation  and  not  to  be  relative,  to 
support  it  and  yet  not  to  be  infected  and  undermined 
by  it,  seem  out  of  the  question.  Diversity  in  the 
real  cannot  be  the  plurality  of  independent  beings. 
And  the  oneness  of  the  Absolute  must  hence  be 
more  than  a  mere  diffused  adjective.  It  possesses 
unity,  as  a  whole,  and  is  a  single  system. 

We  cannot  evade  this  result  by  any  attempt  to 
banish  plurality  and  relations.  We  may  wish  per- 
haps to  contend  for  the  possibility  of  a  several  exist- 
ence apart  from  all  relativity.  "  For  why,"  we  may 
enquire,  "  need  our  distinctions  infect  the  reality  ? 
If  we  distinguish,  we  maintain,  so  far,  a  relation  to 
the  whole ;  but  why  should  not  something,  all  the 
same,  exist  independent  and  without  any  need  of 
foreign  maintenance  .''  Such  a  being  will  be  subject 
to  our  test  of  non-contradiction  ;  yet  it  will  satisfy 
that  test  by  a  simple  abstinence.  Its  nature  must 
be  such  as  to  admit  of  examination  with  reference 
to  the  rest  of  the  universe.  But  this  reference,  and 
its  results,  may  remain  altogether  alien  to  our 
being's  essence.  And  hence  that  being  may  pos- 
sess difference  without  distinction." 

But  the  issue  involved  in  this  contention  has 
already  been  decided  by  our  First  Book.  We  cannot 
regard  such  a  being  as  anything  which  is  possible. 
For,  in  the  first  place,  if  we  are  to  consider  any 
being  to  be  possible,  we  must  rest  on  some  positive 
justification.  But  a  separate  real,  which  is  wholly 
self-dependent,  must,  on  the  other  hand,  fall  entirely 
beyond  our  knowledge.  We  can  have  therefore  no 
ground,  and  hence  no  right,  to  suppose  it  possible. 

outside  of  all   knowledge, 
\nd,  if  it  knows 


1 redly 


mg. 


itself  as  what  it  is,  then,  since  it  falls   within  itself. 


THE  GENERAL  NATURE  OF  REALITV. 


143 


it  so  far  is  the  universe,  and  certainly  is  not  one 
being  among  others.  But  if  it  is  known  by  another, 
then  forthwith  it  cannot  be  self-existent,  since  this 
relation  must  clearly  belong  to  its  essence.  And  it  is 
useless  to  distinguish  its  existence  for  another  from 
its  existence  in  itself.  For  the  being,  as  it  is  in 
itself,  turns  out  to  be  unknowable  ;  and  we  can  have 
no  right  to  regard  it  as  better  than  nothing. 
I  Or,  in  the  second  place,  to  state  the  dilemma  other- 
wise, this  .supposed  real  is  either  different  from  the 
Whole,  or  not  different.  If  it  is  not  different,  then 
at  once  the  question  is  settled.  But  if  it  differs,  then 
its  difference  implies  a  relation  ;  and  that  relation 
turns  the  real  into  an  adjective  of  Reality.  We 
have  seen,  in  the  previous  Book,  that  though  dis- 
tinction involves  difference,  difference  no  less  implies 
distinction.  And  taking  our  stand  throughout  on 
this  result,  we  can  insist  that  independent  beings 
are  impossible.  Reals,  not  different  from  each  other, 
are  not  several  at  all  ;  but  to  be  different,  and  yet 
not  essentially  relative,  is  to  be  a  self-contradiction. 
And  so  we  conclude  that  the  Reality  must  be  a  single 
whole. 


CHAPTER   XIV. 


-i- 


THE    GENERAL    NATURE   OF  REALITY  (continued). 

Our  result  so  far  is  this.  Everything  phenomenal 
is  somehow  real ;  and  the  absolute  must  at  least  be 
as  rich  as  the  relative.  And,  further,  the  Absolute 
is  not  many ;  there  are  no  independent  reals.  The 
universe  is  one  in  this  sense  that  its  differences  exist 
harmoniously  within  one  whole,  beyond  which  there 
is  nothing.  Hence  the  Absolute  is,  so  far,  an  in- 
dividual and  a  system ;  but  if  we  stop  here,  it 
remains  but  formal  and  abstract.  Can  we  then, 
the  question  is,  say  anything  about  the  concrete 
nature  of  the  system  .■*  '     " 

Certainly,  I  think,  this  is  possible.  When  we 
ask  as  to  the  matter  which  fills  up  the  empty  out- 
line, we  can  reply  in  one  word,  that  this  matter  is 
^fyperignce.  And  experience  means  something  much 
the  same  as  given  and  present  fact.  We  perceive, 
on  reflection,  that  to  be  real,  or  even  barely  to  exist, 
must  be  to  fall  within  sentience.  Sentient  ex- 
perience, in  short,  is  reality,  and  what  is  not  this  is 
not  real.  We  may  say,  in  other  words,  that  there 
is  no  being  or  fact  outside  of  that  which  is  commonly 
called  psychical  existence.  Feeling,  thought,  and 
volition  (any  groups  under  which  we  class  psychical 
phenomena)  are  all  the  material  of  existence.  And 
there  is  no  other  material,  actual  or  even  possible. 
This  result  in  its  general  form  seems  evident  at 
once  ;  and,  however  serious  a  step  we  now  seem  to 
have  taken,  there  would  be  no  advantage  at  this 
point  in  discussing  it  at  length.  For  the  test  in  the 
main  lies  ready  to  our  hand,  and  the  decision  rests 


THE    GENERAL   NATURE    OK    REALITY. 


'45 


on  the  manner  in  which  it  is  applied.  I  will  state 
the  case  briefly  thus.  Find  any  piece  of  existence, 
take  up  anything  that  any  one  could  possibly  call  a 
fact,  or  could  in  any  sense  assert  to  have  being,  and 
then  judge  if  it  does  not  consist  j^  sentient  ex- 
perience. Try  to  discover  any  sense  in  which  you 
can  still  continue  to  speak  of  it,  when  all  perception 
and  feeling  have  been  removed  ;  or  point  out  any 
fragment  of  its  matter,  any  aspect  of  its  being,  which 
is  not  derived  from  and  is  not  still  relative  to  this 
source.  When  the  experiment  is  made  strictly,  I 
can  myself  conceive  of  nothing  else  than  the  ex- 
perienced. Anything,  in  no  sense  felt  or  perceived, 
becomes  to  me  quite  unmeaning.  And  as  I  cannot 
try  to  think  of  it  without  realizing  either  that  I  am 
not  thinking  at  all,  or  that  I  am  thinking  of  it  against;^ 
my  will  as  being  experienced,  I  am  driven  to  the  \ 
conclusion  that  for  me  experience  is  the  same  as 
reality.  The  fact  that  falls  elsewhere  seems,  in  my 
mind,  to  be  a  mere  word  and  a  failure,  or  else  an 
attempt  at  self-contradiction.  It  is  a  vicious  ab- 
straction whose  existence  is  meaningless  nonsense, 
and  is  therefore  not  possible. 

This  conclusion  is  open,  of  course,  to  grave  ob- 
jection, and  must  in  its  consequences  give  rise  to 
serious  difficulties.  I  will  not  attempt  to  anticipate 
the  discussion  of  these,  but  before  passing  on,  will 
try  to  obviate  a  dangerous  mistake.  For,  in  asserting 
that  the  real  is  nothing  but  experience,  I  may  be 
understood  to  endorse  a  common  error.  I  may  be 
taken  first  to  divide  the  percipient  subject  from  the 
universe ;  and  then,  resting  on  that  subject,  as  on  a 
thing  actual  by  itself,  I  may  be  supposed  to  urge 
that  it  cannot  transcend  its  own  states. '  Such  an 
argument  would  lead  to  impossible  results,  and 
would  stand  on  a  foundation  of  vicious  abstraction. 
To  set  up  the  subject  as  real  independently  of  the 
whole,   and  to  make  the  whole  into  experience  ia 

1  This  matter  is  discussed  in  Chapter  xxi. 
A.  R.  L 


146 


REALITY. 


-f, 


\ 


the  sense  of  an  adjective  of  that  subject,  seems  to 
me  indefensible.  And  when  I  contend  that  reahty 
must  be  sentient,  my  conclusion  almost  consists  in 
the  denial  of  this  fundamental  error.  For  if,  seeking 
for  reality,  we  go  to  experience,  what  we  certainly 
do  tiof  find  is  a  subject  or  an  object,  or  indeed  any 
other  thing  whatever,  standing  separate  and  on  its 
own  bottom.  What  we  discover  rather  is  a  whole 
in  which  distinctions  can  be  made,  but  in  which 
divisions  do  not  exist.  And  this  is  the  point  on 
which  I  insist,  and  it  is  the  very  ground  on  which  I 
stand,  when  I  urge  that  reality  is  sentient  experience. 
I  mepn  that,  to  be.xeal  is  to  be  indissolubly  one  thing_ 
withjgntience.  It  is  to  be  something  which  comes 
as  a  feature  and  aspect  within  one  whole  of  feeling, 
something  which,  except  as  an  integral  element  of 
such  sentience,  has  no  meaning  at  all.  And  what  1 
repudiate  is  the  separation  of  feeling  from  the  felt, 
ojlfiLtlie  desired  from  desire^  or  of  what  is  thought 
from  thinking,  or  the  division — I  might  add — of 
arj^'thing  from  anything  else.      Nothing  is  ever  so 

"presented  as  real  by  itself,  or  can  be  argued  so  to 
exist  without  demonstrable  fallacy,  And  in  asserting 
that  the  reality  is  experience,  I  rest  throughout  on 
this  foundation.  You  cannot  find  fact  unless  in 
unity  with  sentience,  and  one  cannot  in  the  end  be 
divided  from  the  other,  either  actually  or  in  idea. 
But  to  be  utterly  indivisible  from  feeling  or  percep- 
tion, to  be  an  integral  element  in  a  whole  which  is 
experienced,  this  surely  is  itself  to  de  experience. 
Being  and ,  reality    are,    in    brief,  one    thing  with 

,  seh'tl6'rtce  ;^'tTieY  can  neither  be  opposed  to,  nor  even 
in  the  end,  distinguished  from  it. 

I  am  well  aware  that  this  statement  stands  in 
need  of  explanation  and  defence.  This  will,  1  hope, 
be  supplied  by  succeeding  chapters,  and  I  think  it 
better  for  the  present  to  attempt  to  go  forward. 
Our  conclusion,  so  far,  will  be  this,  that  the  Absolute 
is  one  system,  and  that  its  contents  are  nothing  but 


THE  GENERAL  NATURE  OF  REALITY.      1 47 

sentient  experience.  It  will  hence  be  a  single  and 
^ILirjglusive  experience,  which  embraces  every 
partial  diversity  in  concord.  For  it  cannot  be  less 
than  appearance,  and  hence  no  feeling  or  thought, 
oTany  kind,  can  fall  outside  its  limits.  And  if  it  is 
more  than  any  feeling  or  thought  which  we  know,  it 
must  still  remain  more  of  the  same  nature.  It 
cannot  pass  into  another  region  beyond  what  falls 
under  the  general  head  of  sentience.  For  to  assert 
that  possibility  would  be  in  the  end  to  use  words 
without  a  meaning.  We  can  entertain  no  such 
suggestion  except  as  self-contradictory,  and  as  there- 
fore impossible. 

This  conclusion  will,  I  trust,  at  the  end  of  my 
work  bring  more  conviction  to  the  reader;  for  we 
shall  find  that  it  is  the  one  view  which  will  har- 
monize all  facts.  And  the  objections  brought 
against  it,  when  it  and  they  are  once  properly 
defined,  will  prove  untenable.  But  our  general 
result  is  at  present  seriously  defective  ;  and  we 
must  now  attempt  to  indicate  and  remedy  its  failure 
in  principle. 

^_What  we  have  secured,  up  to  this  point,  may  be 
called  mere  theoretical  consistency.  The  Absolute 
holds  all  possible  content  in  an  individual  experience 
where  no  contradiction  can  exist.  And  it  seems,  at 
first  sight,  as  if  this  theoretical  perfection  could  exist 
together  with  practical  defect  and  misery.  For 
apparently,  so  far  as  we  have  gone,  an  experience 
might  be  harmonious,  in  such  a  way  at  least  as  not 
to  contradict  itself,  and  yet  might  result  on  the  whole 
in  a  balance  of  suffering.  Now  no  one  can 
genuinely  believe  that  sheer  misery,  however  self- 
consistent,  is  good  and  desirable.  And  the  question 
is  whether  in  this  way  our  conclusion  is  wrecked. 

There  may  be  those  possibly  who  here  would  join 
issue  at  once.  They  might  perhaps  wish  to  contend 
that  the  objection  is  irrelevant,  since  pain  is  no  evil. 


«4« 


REALITY. 


i 


I  shall  discuss  the  general  question  of  good  and 
evil  in  a  subsequent  chapter,  and  will  merely  say 
here  that  for  myself  I  cannot  stand  upon  the  ground 
that  pain  is  no  evil.  1  admit,  or  rather  1  would 
assert,  that  a  result,  if  it  fails  to  satisfy  our  whole 
nature,  comes  short  of  perfection.  And  I  could  not 
rest  tranquilly  in  a  truth  if  I  were  compelled  to 
regard  it  as  hateful.  While  unable,  that  is,  to  denyA 
it,  I  should,  rightly  or  wrongly,  insist  that  the 
enquiry  was  not  yet  closed,  and  that  the  result  was> 
but  partial.  And  if  metaphysics  is  to  stand,  it  must, 
I  think,  take  account  of  all  sides  of  our  being.  1 
do  not  mean  that  every  one  of  our  desires  must  be 
met  by  a  promise  of  particular  satisfaction  ;  for  that 
would  be  absurd  and  utterly  imf>ossible.  But  if  the 
main  tendencies  of  our  nature  do  not  reach  consum- 
mation in  the  Absolute,  we  cannot  believe  that  we 
have  attained  to  perfection  and  truth.  And  we 
shall  have  to  consider  later  on  what  desires  must  be 
taken  as  radical  and  fundamental.  But  here  we 
have  seen  that  our  conclusion,  so  far,  has  a  serious 
defect,  and  the  question  is  whether  this  defect  can 
be  directly  remedied.  We  have  been  resting  on  the 
theoretical  standard  which  guarantees  that  Reality 
is  a  self-consistent  system.  Have  we  a  practical  '' 
standard  which  now  can  assure  us  that  this  system 
will  satisfy  our  desire  for  perfect  good  ?  An  affirm- 
ative answer  seems  plausible,  but  I  do  not  think  it 
would  be  true.  Without  any  doubt  we  possess  a 
practical  standard  ;  but  that  does  not  seem  to  me  to 
yield  a  conclusion  about  reality,  or  it  will  not  give  us 
at  least  directly  the  result  we  are  seeking.  I  will 
attempt  briefly  to  e.xplain  in  what  way  it  comes 
short. 

That  a  practical  end  and  criterion  e.xists  I  shall 
assume,  and  I  will  deal  with  its  nature  more  fully 
hereafter  (Chapter  xxv.).  I  may  say  for  the 
present  that,  taken  in  the  abstract,  the  practical 
standard  seems  to  be  the  same  as  what   is  used  for 


THE    GENERAL    NATURE    OK    REALITY. 


149 


theory.  It  is  individuality,  the  harmonious  or  con- 
sistent existence  of  our  contents ;  an  existence, 
further,  which  cannot  be  limited  because,  if  so,  it 
would  contradict  itself  internally  (Chapters  xx.  and 
xxiv.).  Nor  need  I  separate  myself  at  this  stage 
from  the  intelligent  Hedonist,  since,  in  my  judgment. 
practical  perfection  will  carry  a  balance  of  pleasure 
These  pomts  I  shall  have  to  discuss,  and  for  the 
present  am  content  to  assume  them  provisionally 
and  vaguely.  Now  taking  the  practical  end  as  in- 
dividuality, or  as  clear  pleasure,  or  rather  as  both  in 
one,  the  question  is  whether  this  end  is  known  to  be 
realized  in  the  Absolute,  and,  if  so,  upon  what 
foundation  such  knowledge  can  rest.  It  apparently 
cannot  be  drawn  directly  from  the  theoretical 
criterion,  and  the  question  is  whether  the  practical 
standard  can  supply  it.  I  will  explain  why  I 
believe  that  this  cannot  be  the  case. 

I  will  first  deal  briefly  with  the  "  ontological " 
argument.  The  essential  nature  of  this  will,  I  hope. 
be  more  clear  to  us  hereafter  (Chapter  xxiv.) 
and  I  will  here  merely  point  out  why  it  fails  to  give 
us  help.  This  argument  might  be  stated  in  several 
forms,  but  the  main  point  is  very  simple.  We  have 
the  idea  of  perfection — there  is  no  doubt  as  to  that 
— and  the  question  is  whether  perfection  also  actually 
exists.  Now  the  ontological  view  urges  that  the  fact 
of  the  idea  proves  the  fact  of  the  reality  ;  or,  to  put 
it  otherwise,  it  argues  that,  unless  perfection  existed, 
you  could  not  have  it  in  idea,  which  is  agreed  to  be 
the  case.  I  shall  not  discuss  at  present  the  general 
validity  of  this  argument,  but  will  confine  myself  to 
denying  its  applicability.  For,  if  an  idea  has  been 
manufactured  and  is  composed  of  elements  taken  up 
from  more  than  one  source,  then  the  result  of  manu- 
facture does  not  necessarily  exist  out  of  my  thought, 
however  much  that  is  the  case  with  its  separate 
elements.  Thus  we  might  admit  that,  in  one  sense, 
perfection  or  completeness  would  not  be  present  in 


"50 


REALITY. 


idea  unless  also  it  were  real.     We  might  admit  this, 
and  yet  we  might  deny  the  same  conclusion  with 
respect  to  pratlical  perfection.     For  the  perfection 
that  is  real  might  simply  be  theoretical.     It  might 
mean  system  so  far  as  system  is  mere  theoretical 
harmony  and   does  not  imply  pleasure.     And   the 
element  of  pleasure,  taken  up  from  elsewhere,  may 
then  have  been  added  in  our  minds  to  this  valid  idea. 
But,  if  so,  the  addition  may  be  incongruous,  incom- 
patible, and    really,   if   we    knew    it,    contradictory. 
Pleasure  and  system  perhaps  are  in   truth  a  false 
compound,  an  appearance  which  exists,  as  such,  only) 
in  our  heads  ;  just  as  would  be  the  case  if  we  thought  ' 
for  example,  of  a  perfect   finite  being.      Hence  the 
ontological  argument  cannot  prove  the  existence  o 
practical  perfection  ; '  and  let  us  go  on  to  enquire  i 
any  other  proof  exists. 

It  is  in  some  ways  natural  to  suppose  that  the 
practical  end  somehow  postulates  its  existence  as  a 
fact.  But  a  more  careful  examination  tends  to  dis- 
sipate this  idea.  The  moral  end,  it  is  clear,  is  not 
pronounced  by  morality  to  have  actual  existence. 
This  is  quite  plain,  and  it  would  be  easier  to  contend 
that  morality  even  postulates  the  opposite  (Chapter 
XXV.).  Certainly,  as  we  shall  perceive  hereafter, 
the  religious  consciousness  does  imply  the  reality  of 
that  object,  which  also  is  its  goal.  But  a  religion, 
whose  object  is  perfect,  will  be  founded  on  inconsist- 
ency, even  more  than  is  the  case  with  mere  morality. 
For  such  a  religion,  if  it  implies  the  existence  of  its 
ideal,  implies  at  the  same  time  a  feature  which  is 
quite  incompatible.  This  we  shall  discuss  in  a  later 
chapter,  and  all  ihat  I  will  urge  here  is  that  the 
religious  consciousness  cannot  prove  that  perfection 
really  exists.  For  it  is  not  true  that  in  all  religions 
the  object  is  perfection ;  nor,  where  it  is  so,  does 


'  The  objection   that,  after  all,  the  compound  is  there,  will  be 
met  in  Chapter  xxiv.     Notice  also  that  I  do  not  distinguish  as  yei 
and  "reality."     But  see  p.  317. 


between  "existence" 


THK    GENERAL   NATURE   OF    REALITY. 


I  SI 


[ 


religion  possess  any  right  to  dictate  to  or  to  dominate 
over  thought.  It  does  not  follow  that  a  belief  must 
be  admitted  to  be  true,  because,  given  a  certain . 
influence,  it  is  practically  irresistible.  JXliere-  is_a_^ 
^ndency  in  religioii  to  take  the  ideal  as  existingj 
and  this  tendency  sways  our  minds  and,  under  cer- 
tain conditions,  may  amount  to  compulsion.  But 
it  does  not,  therefore,  and  merely  for  this  reason, 
give  us  truth,  and  we  may  recall  other  experience 
which  forces  us  to  doubt.  A  man,  for  instance,  may 
love  a.  woman  whom,  when  he  soberly  considers,  he 
cannot  think  true,  and  yet,  in  the  into.xication  of  her 
presence,  may  give  up  his  whole  mind  to  the  sugges- 
tions of  blind  passion.  But  in  all  cases,  that  alone 
is  really  valid  for  the  intellect,  which  in  a  calm 
moment  the  mere  intellect  is  incapable  of  doubting. 
It  is  only  that  which  for  thought  is  compulsory  and 
irresistible — only  that  which  thought  must  assert  in 
attempting  to  deny  it — which  is  a  valid  foundation 
for  metaphysical  truth. 

"  But  how,"  I  may  be  asked,  "  can  you  justify  this 
superiority  of  the  intellect,  this  predominance  ot 
thought  ?  On  what  foundation,  if  on  any,  does  such 
a  despotism  rest  ?  For  there  seems  no  special  force 
in  the  intellectual  axiom  if  you  regard  it  impartially. 
Nay,  if  you  consider  the  question  without  bias,  and 
if  you  reflect  on  the  nature  of  axioms  in  general,  you 
may  be  brought  to  a  wholly  different  conclusion. 
For  a//  axioms,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  are  practical. 
They  all  depend  upon  the  will.  They  none  of  them 
in  the  end  can  amount  to  more  than  the  impulse  to 
behave  in  a  certain  way.  And  they  cannot  express 
more  than  this  impulse,  together  with  the  impossi- 
bility of  satisfaction  unless  it  is  complied  with. 
And  hence,  the  intellect,  far  from  possessing  a  right 
to  predominate,  is  simply  one  instance  and  one 
symptom  of  practical  compulsion.  Or  (to  put  the 
case  more  psychologically)  the  intellect  is  merely  one 
result  of  the  general  working  of  pleasure  and  pain. 


152 


REALITY. 


It  is  even  subordinate,  and  therefore  its  attempt  at  J 
despotism  is  founded  on  baseless  pretensions."  / 

Now,  apart  from  its  dubious  psychological  setting, 
I  can  admit  the  general  truth  contained  in  this  objec- 
tion. The  theoretical  axiom  is  the  statement  of  an 
impulse  to  act  in  a  certain  manner.  When  that 
impulse  is  not  satisfied  there  ensues  disquiet  and 
movement  in  a  certain  direction,  until  such  a  char- 
acter is  given  to  the  result  as  contents  the  impulse 
and  produces  rest.  And  the  e,\pression  of  this 
fundamental  principle  of  action  is  what  we  call  an 
axiom.  Take,  for  example,  the  law  of  avoiding 
contradiction.  When  two  elements  will  not  remain 
quietly  together,  but  collide  and  struggle,  we  cannot 
rest  satisfied  with  that  state.  Our  impulse  is  to 
alter  it,  and,  on  the  theoretical  side,  to  bring  the 
content  to  such  a  shape  that  the  variety  remains 
peaceably  in  one.  And  this  inability  to  rest  other- 
wise, and  this  tendency  to  alter  in  a  certain  way 
and  direction,  is,  when  reflected  on  and  made  ex- 
plicit, our  axiom  and  our  intellectual  standard. 

"  But  is  not  this,"  I  may  be  asked  further,  "  a  sur- 
render of  your  position  ?  Does  not  this  admit  that 
the  criterion  used  for  theory  is  merely  a  practical 
impulse,  a  tendency  to  movement  from  one  side  of 
our  being  ?  And,  if  so,  how  can  the  intellectual 
standard  be  predominant  .''  "  But  it  is  necessary' 
here  to  distinguish.  The  whole  question  turns  on 
the  difference  between  the  several  impulses  of  our 
being.'  You  may  call  the  intellect,  if  you  like,  a 
mere  tendency  to  movement,  but  you  must  remember 
that  it  is  a  movement  of  a  very  special  kind.  I  shall 
enter  more  fully  into  the  nature  of  thinking  hereafter, 
but  the  crucial  point  may  be  stated  at  once.  In 
thought  the  standard,  you  may  say,  amounts  merely  to 
"  act  so  "  ;  but  then  "act  so"  means  "think  so,"  and 
"  think  so  "  means  "  it  is."  And  the  psychological 
origin  and  base  of  this  movement, and  of  this  inability 
'  Compare  here  CKapter  xxvi. 


TUt  GENERAL  NATURE  OF  KEALITV. 


'53 


to  act  otherwise,  may  be  anything  you  please  ;  for 
that  is  all  utterly  irrelevant  to  the  metaphysical  issue. 
Thinking  is  the  attempt  to  satisfy  a  special  impulse, 
and  the  attempt  implies  an  assumption  about  reality. 
You  may  avoid  the  assumption  so  far  as  you  decline 
to  think,  but,  if  you  sit  down  to  the  game,  there  is 
only  one  way  of  playing.  In  order  to  think  at  all 
you  must  subject  yourself  to  a  standard,  a  standard 
which  implies  an  absolute  knowledge  of  reality  ;  and 
while  you  doubt  this,  you  accept  it,  and  obey  while/ 
you  rebel.  You  may  urge  that  thought,  after  all,  Is 
inconsistent,  because  ajipearance  is  not  got  rid  of 
but  merely  shelved.  That  is  another  question  which 
will  engage  us  in  a  future  chapter,  and  here  may  be 
dismissed.  For  In  any  case  thinking  means  the 
acceptance  of  a  certain  standard,  and  that  standard, 
in  any  case,  is  an  assumption  as  to  the  character  of 
reality. 

"  But  why,"  It  may  be  objected,  'is  this  assump- 
tion better  than  what  holds  for  practice  ?  Why  is 
the  theoretical  to  be  superior  to  the  practical  end  ?  " 
I  have  never  said  that  this  is  so.  Only  here,  that  is] 
in  metaphysics,  I  must  be  allowed  to  reply,  we  are/ 
acting  theoretically.  We  are  occupied  specially,  andj 
are  therefore  subject  to  special  conditions  ;  and  the 
theoretical  standard  within  theory  must  surely  be 
absolute.  We  have  no  right  to  listen  to  morality 
when  it  rushes  In  blindly.  "  Act  so,"  urges  morality, 
that  is  "  6e  so  or  be  dissatisfied."  But  if  I  am  dis- 
satisfied, still  apparently  I  may  be  none  the  less  real. 
"  Act  so,"  replies  speculation,  that  is,  "think  so  or 
be  dissatisfied;  and  if  you  do  not  think  so,  what  you 
think  is  certainly  not  real."  And  these  two  com 
mands  do  not  seem  to  be  directly  connected.  If  I 
am  theoretically  not  satisfied,  then  what  appears 
must  in  reality  be  otherwise  ;  but,  if  I  am  dissatis- 
fied practically,  the  same  conclusion  does  not  hold. 
Thus  the  two  satisfactions  are  not  the  same,  nor  does 
there  appear  to  be  a  straight  way  from  the  one  to  the 


•54 


REALITY. 


world  is  quite  other 
unable  theoretically 
morality  acquiesce  ? 


other.  Or  consider  again  the  same  question  from  a 
different  side.  Morality  seemed  anxious  to  dictate 
to  metaphysics,  but  is  it  prepared  to  accept  a  corre- 
sponding dictation  ?     If  it  were  to  hear  that  the  real 

than  its  ideal,  and,  if  it  were 
to  shake  this  result,  would 
Would  it  not,  on  the  other 
hand,  regardless  of  this,  still  maintain  its  own  ground  ? 
Facts  may  be  as  you  say,  but  none  the  less  they 
should  not  be  so,  and  something  else  ought  to  be. 
Morality,  I  think,  would  take  this  line,  and,  if  so,  it 
should  accept  a  like  attitude  in  theory.  It  must  not 
dictate  as  to  what  facts  are,  while  it  refuses  to  admit 
dictation  as  to  what  they  should  be. 

Certainly,  to  any  one  who  believes  in  the  unity  of 
our  nature,  a  one-sided  satisfaction  will  remain  in- 
credible. And  such  a  consideration  to  my  mind 
carries  very  great  weight.  But  to  stand  on  one  side 
of  our  nature,  and  to  argue  from  that  directly  to  the 
other  side,  seems  illegitimate.  1  will  not  here  ask 
how  far  morality  is  consistent  with  itself  in  demand- 
ing complete  harmony  (Chapter  xxv.).  What  seems 
clear  is  that,  in  wishing  to  dictate  to  mere  theory,  it 
is  abandoning  its  own  position  and  is  courting 
foreign  occupation.  And  it  is  misled  mainly  by  a 
failure  to  observe  essential  distinctions.  "Be  so" 
does  not  mean  always  "  think  so,"  and  "  think  so," 
in  its  main  signification,  certainly  does  not  mean  "be 
so."  Their  difference  is  the  difference  between  "  you 
ought  "  and  "  it  is  " — and  I  can  see  no  direct  road 
from  the  one  to  the  other.  If  a  theory  could  be  made 
by  the  will,  that  would  have  to  satisfy  the  will,  and, 
if  it  did  not,  it  would  be  false.  But  since  meta- 
physics is  mere  theory,  and  since  theory  from  its 
nature  must  be  made  by  the  intellect,  it  is  here  the 
intellect  alone  which  has  to  be  satisfied.  Doubtless 
a  conclusion  which  fails  to  content  all  the  sides  of 
my  nature  leaves  me  dissatisfied.  But  I  see  no 
direct  way  of  passing  from  "  this  does  not  satisfy  my 


* 


THE  GENERAL  NATURE  OK  REALITY. 


«55 


nature  "  to  "  therefore  it  is  false."  For  false  is  the 
same  as  theoretically  untenable,  and  we  are  suppos- 
ing a  case  where  mere  theory  has  been  satisfied,  and 
where  the  result  has  in  consequence  been  taken  as 
true.  And,  so  far  as  I  see,  we  must  admit  that,  if 
the  intellect  is  contented,  the  question  is  settled. 
For  we  may  feel  as  we  please  about  the  intellectual 
conclusion,  but  we  cannot,  on  such  external  ground. 
protest  that  it  is  false. 

Hence  if  we  understand  by  perfection  a  state  of 
harmony  with  pleasure,  there  is  no  direct  way  of 
showing  that  reality  is  perfect.  For,  so  far  as  the  In- 
tellectual standard  at  present  seems  to  go,  we  might 
have  harmony  with  pain  and  with  partial  dissatisfac- 
tion. But  I  think  the  case  is  much  altered  when  we 
consider  it  otherwise,  and  when  we  ask  if  on  an- 
other ground  such  harmony  is  possible.  The  intel- 
lect is  not  to  be  dictated  to  ;  that  conclusion  is  irre- 
fragable. But  is  it  certain,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
the  mere  intellect  can  be  self-satisfied,  if  other  ele- 
ments of  our  nature  remain  not  contented  .'*  Or 
must  we  not  think  rather  that  indirectly  any  partial 
discontent  will  bring  unrest  and  imperfection  into 
the  intellect  itself?  If  this  is  so,  then  to  suppose 
any  imperfection  in  the  Absolute  is  inadmissible. 
Fo  fail  in  any  way  would  introduce  a  discord  into 
perception  itself.  And  hence,  since  we  have  found 
that,  taken  perceptively,  reality  is  harmonious,  it  must 
be  harmonious  altogether,  and  must  satisfy  our 
whole  nature.  Let  us  see  if  on  this  line  we  can 
make  an  advance. 

If  the  Absolute  is  to  be  theoretically  harmonious, 
its  elements  must  not  collide.  Idea  must  not  dis- 
agree with  sensation,  nor  must  sensations  clash.  In 
every  case,  that  is,  the  struggle  must  not  be  a  mere 
struggle.  There  must  be  a  unity  which  it  subserves, 
and  a  whole,  taken  in  which,  it  is  a  struggle  no 
longer.     How  this  resolution  is  possible  we  may  be 


•56 


REALITY. 


ible  to  see  partly  i 


able  to  see  partly  in  our  subsequent  chapters,  but  for 
the  present  I  would  insist  merely  that  somehow  it 
must  exist.  Since  reality  is  harmonious,  want  of 
harmony  is  not  possible,  and  a  mere  collision  of  per- 
ceptive elements  is  assuredly  want  of  harmony. 
But,  if  idea  must  not  clash  with  sensation,  then  there 
cannot  in  the  Absolute  be  unsatisfied  desire  or  any 
practical  unrest.  For  in  these  there  is  clearly  an  ideal 
element  not  concordant  with  presentation  but  strug- 
gling against  it,  and,  if  you  remove  this  discordance, 
then  with  it  all  unsatisfied  desire  is  gone.  In  order 
for  such  a  desire,  in  even  its  lowest  form,  to  persist, 
there  must  (so  far  as  I  can  see)  be  an  idea,  standing 
over  against  sensation  and  fixed  for  the  moment  in 
discord.  And  any  such  state  is  not  compatible  with 
theoretical  harmony. 

But  this  result  perhaps  has  ignored  an  outstanding 
possibility.  Unsatisfied  desires  might,  as  such,  not 
exist  in  the  Absolute,  and  yet  seemingly  there  might 
remain  a  clear  balance  of  pain.  For,  in  the  first 
place,  it  is  not  proved  that  all  pain  must  arise  from 
an  unresolved  struggle  ;  and,  it  may  be  contended, 
in  the  second  place,  that  possibly  the  discord  might 
be  resolved,  and  yet,  so  far  as  we  know,  the  pain 
might  remain.  In  a  painful  stniggle  it  maybe  urged 
that  the  pain  can  be  real,  though  the  struggle  is 
apparent.  For  we  shall  see,  when  we  discuss  error 
(Chapter  xvi.),  how  discordant  elements  may  be 
neutralized  in  a  wider  complex.  We  shall  find  how, 
in  that  system,  they  can  take  on  a  different  arrange- 
ment, and  so  result  in  harmony.  And  the  question 
here  as  to  unsatisfied  desires  will  be  this.  Can  they 
not  be  merged  in  a  whole,  so  as  to  lose  their  charac- 
ter of  discordance,  and  thus  cease  to  be  desires, 
while  their  pain  none  the  less  survives  in  reality  ? 
If  so,  that  whole,  after  all,  would  be  imperfect  For, 
while  possessor  of  harmony,  it  still  might  be  sunk  in 
misery,  or  might  suffer  at  least  with  a  balance  of 
pain.      This  objection    is  serious,   and   it  calls   for 


THE    GliNERAI.    NATURE   OF    REALl  I Y. 


157 


some  discussion  here.  I  shall  have  to  deal  with  it 
once  more  in  our  concluding  chapter. 

I  feel  at  this  point  our  want  of  knowledge  with 
regard  to  the  conditions  of  pleasure  and  pain.'  It 
is  a  tenable  view,  one  at  least  which  can  hardly  be 
refuted,  that  pain  is  caused,  or  conditioned,  by  an 
unresolved  collision.  Now,  if  this  really  is  the  case, 
then,  given  harmony,  a  balance  of  pain  is  impos- 
sible. Pain,  of  course,  is  a  fact,  and  no  fact  can  be 
conjured  away  from  the  universe ;  but  the  question 
here  is  entirely  as  to  a  balance  of  pain.  Now  it  is 
common  experience  that  in  mixed  states  pain  may 
be  neutralized  by  pleasure  in  such  a  way  that  the 
balance  is  decidedly  pleasant.  And  hence  it  is 
possible  that  in  the  universe  as  a  whole  we  may 
have  a  balance  of  pleasure,  and  in  the  total  result 
no  residue  of  pain.  This  is  possible,  and  if  an  un- 
resolved conflict  and  discord  is  essential  to  pain,  it  is 
much  more  than  possible.  Since  the  reality  is  har- 
monious, and  since  harmony  excludes  the  conditions 
which  are  requisite  for  a  balance  of  pain,  that  bal- 
ance is  impossible.  I  will  urge  this  so  far  as  to 
raise  a  very  grave  doubt.  I  question  our  right  even 
to  suppose  a  state  of  pain  in  the  Absolute. 

And  this  doubt  becomes  more  grave  when  we 
consider  another  point.  When  we  pass  from  the 
conditions  to  the  effects  of  painful  feeling,  we  are 
on  surer  ground.  For  in  our  experience  the  result 
of  pain  is  disquietude  and  unrest.  Its  main  action 
is  to  set  up  change,  and  to  prevent  stability.  There 
is  authority,  I  am  aware,  for  a  different  view,  but, 
so  far  as  1  see,  that  view  cannot  be  reconciled  with 
facts.  This  effect  of  pain  has  here  a  most  impor- 
tant bearing.  Assume  that  in  the  Absolute  there  is 
a  balance  of  pleasure,  and  all  is  consistent.  For 
the  pains  can  condition  those  processes  which,  as 
processes,  disappear  in  the  life  of  the  whole ;  and 
these  pains  can  be  neutralized  by  an  overplus  of 
'  Cf.  Mindf  xiiL  pp.  3-14. 


«58 


REALITY. 


^^^ 


pleasure.  But  if  you  suppose,  on  the  other  hand,  a 
balance  of  pain,  the  difficulty  becomes  at  once  in- 
superable. We  have  postulated  a  state  of  harmony, 
and,  together  with  that,  the  very  condition  of  in- 
stability and  discord.  We  have  in  the  Absolute,  on 
one  side,  a  state  of  things  where  the  elements  can- 
not jar,  and  where  in  particular  idea  does  not  con- 
flict with  presentation.  But  with  pain  on  the  other 
side  we  have  introduced  a  main-spring  of  change 
and  unrest,  and  we  thus  produce  necessarily  an  idea 
not  in  harmony  with  existence.  And  this  idea  of 
a  better  and  of  a  non-e.\isting  condition  of  things 
must  directly  destroy  theoretical  rest.  But,  if  so, 
such  an  idea  must  be  called  impossible.  There  is 
no  pain  on  the  whole,  and  in  the  Absolute  our 
whole  nature  must  find  satisfaction.  For  otherwise 
there  is  no  theoretical  harmony,  and  that  harmony 
we  saw  must  certainly  exist.  I  shall  ask  in  our 
last  chapter  if  there  is  a  way  of  avoiding  this  con- 
clusion, but  for  the  present  we  seem  bound  to  accept 
it  as  true.  We  must  not  admit  the  possibility  of  an 
Ab.solute  perfect  in  apprehension  yet  resting  tran- 
quilly in  pain.  The  question  as  to  actual  evidence 
of  defect  in  the  universe  will  be  discussed  in 
Chapter  xvii.  ;  and  our  position  so  far  is  this. 
We  cannot  argue  directly  that  all  sides  of  our  nature 
must  be  satisfied,  but  indirectly  we  are  led  to  the 
same  result.  For  we  are  forced  to  assume  theo- 
retical satisfaction ;  and  to  suppose  that  existing 
one-sidedly,  and  together  with  practical  discomfort, 
appears  inadmissible.  Such  a  state  is  a  possibility 
which  seems  to  contradict  itself  It  is  a  supposition 
to  which,  if  we  cannot  find  any  ground  in  its  favour, 
we  have  no  right.  For  the  present  at  least  it  is 
better  to  set  it  down  as  inconceivable.' 

And  hence,  for  the  present  at  least,  we  must  be- 

'  In  our  last  chapter  this  conclasion  will  be  slightly  modified. 
The  supposition  will  appear  there  to  be  barely  possible. 


THE    GENERAL    NATURE    OF    REALITY. 


159 


Jieve  that  reality  satisfies  our  whole  being.  Our 
main  wants — for  truth  and  life,  and  for  beauty  and 
goodness — must  all  find  satisfaction.  And  we  have 
seen  that  this  consummation  must  somehow  be 
experience,  and  be  individual.  Every  element  of 
the  universe,  sensation,  feeling,  thought  and  will, 
must  be  included  within  one  comprehensive  sen- 
tience. And  the  question  which  now  occurs  is 
whether  really  we  have  a  positive  idea  of  such  sen- 
tience. Do  we  at  all  know  what  we  mean  when 
we  say  that  it  is  actual  ."* 

Fully  to  realize  the  existence  of  the  Absolute  is 
for  finite  beings  impossible.  In  order  thus  to  know 
we  should  have  to  be,  and  then  %ve  should  not  exist. 
This  result  is  certain,  and  all  attempts  to  avoid  it 
are  illusory.  But  then  the  whole  question  turns  on 
the  sense  in  which  we  are  to  understand  "  know- 
ing." What  is  impossible  is  to  construct  absolute 
life  in  its  detail,  to  have  the  specific  experience  in 
which  it  consists.  But  to  gain  an  idea  of  its  main 
features — an  idea  true  so  far  as  it  goes,  though 
abstract  and  incomplete — is  a  different  endeavour. 
And  it  is  a  task,  so  far  as  I  see,  in  which  we  may 
succeed.  For  these  main  features,  to  some  extent, 
are  within  our  own  experience ;  and  again  the  idea 
ot  their  combination  is,  in  the  abstract,  quite  intellig- 
ible. And  surely  no  more  than  this  is  wanted  for 
a  knowledge  of  the  Absolute.  It  is  a  knowledge 
which  of  course  differs  enormously  from  the  fact. 
But  it  is  true,  for  all  that,  while  it  respects  its  own 
limits  ;  and  it  seems  fully  attainable  by  the  finite 
intellect. 

I  will  end  this  chapter  by  briefly  mentioning  the  / 
sources  of  such  knowledge.  First,  in  mere  feeling,/ 
or  immediate  presentation,  we  have  the  experience 
of  a  whole  (Chapters  ix.,  xix.,  xxvi.,  xxvii.)/ 
This  whole  contains  diversity,  and,  on  the  othef- 
hand,  is  not  parted  by  relations.  Such  an  experi- 
ence,   we  must  admit,  is  most   imperfect   and    uii- 


i6o 


REALITY. 


Stable,  and  its  inconsistencies  lead  us  at  once  to 
transcend  it.  Indeed,  we  hardly  possess  it  as  more 
than  that  which  we  are  in  the  act  of  losing.  But  it 
serves  to  suggest  to  us  the  general  idea  of  a  total 
experience,  where  will  and  thought  and  feeling  may 
all  once  more  be  one.  Further,  this  same  unity, 
felt  below  distinctions,  shows  itself  later  in  a  kind  of 
hostility  against  them.  We  find  it  in  the  efforts 
made  both  by  theory  and  practice,  each  to  complete 
itself  and  so  to  pass  into  the  other.  And.  again,  the 
relational  form,  as  we  saw,  pointed  everywhere  to 
an  unity.  It  implies  a  substantial  totality  beyond 
relations  and  above  them,  a  whole  endeavouring 
without  success  to  realize  itself  in  their  detail.  P'ur- 
ther,  the  ideas  of  goodness,  and  of  the  beautiful, 
suggest  in  different  ways  the  same  result.  They 
more  or  less  involve  the  experience  of  a  whole  be- 
yond relations  though  full  of  diversity.  Now,  if  we 
gather  (as  we  can)  such  considerations  into  one, 
they  will  assuredly  supply  us  with  a  positive  idea. 
We  gain  from  them  the  knowledge  of  a  unity 
which  transcends  and  yet  contains  every  manifold 
appearance.  They  supply  not  an  experience  but  an 
abstract  idea,  an  idea  which  we  make  by  uniting 
given  elements.  And  the  mode  of  union,  once  more 
in  the  abstract,  is  actually  given.  Thus  we  know 
what  is  meant  by  an  experience,  which  embraces  all 
divisions,  and  yet  somehow  possesses  the  direct 
nature  of  feeling.  We  can  form  the  general  idea 
of  an  absolute  intuition  in  which  phenomenal  dis- 
tinctions are  merged,  a  whole  become  immediate  at 
a  higher  stage  without  losing  any  richness.  Our 
complete  inability  to  understand  this  concrete  unity 
in  detail  is  no  good  ground  for  our  declining  to 
entertain  it.  Such  a  ground  would  be  irrational, 
and  its  principle  could  hardly  everywhere  be  ad- 
hered to.  But  if  we  can  realize  at  all  the  general 
features  of  the  Absolute,  if  we  can  see  that  some- 
how they  come  together  in  a  way  known  vaguely 


THE  GENERAL  NATURE  OF  REALITY.      l6l 

and  in  the  abstract,  our  result  is  certain.  Our  con- 
clusion, so  far  as  it  goes,  is  real  knowledge  of  the 
Absolute,  positive  knowledge  built  on  experience, 
and  inevitable  when  we  try  to  think  consistently. 
We  shall  realize  its  nature  more  clearly  when  we 
have  confronted  it  with  a  series  of  objections  and 
difficulties.  If  our  result  will  hold  against  them  all, 
we  shall  be  able  to  urge  that  in  reason  we  are  bound 
to  think  it  true. 


A.  R.  M 


CHAPTER    XV. 


THOUGHT    AND    REALITY. 


There  is  a  natural  objection  which  the  reader  will 
raise  against  our  account  of  the  Absolute.  The 
difficulty  lies,  he  may  urge,  not  in  making  a  state- 
ment, which  by  itself  seems  defensible,  but  rather  in 
reconciling  any  view  with  obvious  inconsistencies. 
The  real  problem  is  to  show  how  appearance  and 
evil,  and  in  general  finite  existence,  are  compatible 
with  the  Absolute.  These  questions,  however,  he 
will  object,  have  been  so  far  neglected.  And  it  is 
these  which  in  the  next  chapter  must  begin  to 
engage  our  serious  attention.  Still  it  is  better  not 
to  proceed  at  once  ;  and  before  we  deal  with  error 
we  must  gain  some  notion  of  what  we  mean  by 
truth.  In  the  present  chapter  I  will  try  to  state 
briefly  the  main  essence  of  thought,  and  to  justify 
its  distinction  from  actual  existence.  It  is  only  by 
misunderstanding  that  we  find  difficulty  in  taking 
diought  to  be  something  less  than  reality. 

If  we  take  up  anything  considered  real,  no 
matter  what  it  is,  we  find  in  it  two  aspects.  There 
are  always  two  things  we  can  say  about  it ;  and,  it 
we  cannot  say  both,  we  have  not  got  reality.  There 
is  a  "  what"  and  a  "  that,"  an  existence  and  a  con- 
tent, and  the  two  are  inseparable.  That  anything 
should  be,  and  should  yet  be  nothing  in  particular, 
or  that  a  quality  should  not  qualify  and  give  a 
character  to  anything,  are  obviously  impossible,  it 
we  try  to  get  the  "  that  "  by  itself,  we  do  not  get  it. 
For  either    we   have   it  qualified,  or  else   we   fail 


i6a 


THOUGHT   AND    REALITY. 


163 


Utterly.  If  we  try  to  get  the  "  what"  by  itself,  we 
find  at  once  that  it  is  not  all.  It  points  to  some- 
thing beyond,  and  cannot  exist  by  itself  and  as  a 
bare  adjective.  Neither  of  these  aspects,  if  you 
isolate  it,  can  be  taken  as  real,  or  indeed  in  that 
case  is  itself  any  longer.  They  are  distinguishable 
only  and  are  not  divisible. 

And  yet  thought  seems  essentially  to  consist  in 
their  division.  For  thought  is  clearly,  to  some 
extent  at  least,  ideal.  Without  an  idea  there  is  no 
thinking,  and  an  idea  implies  the  separation  of  con- 
tent from  existence.  It  is  a  "  what  "  which,  so  far 
as  it  is  a  mere  idea,  clearly  is  not.  and  if  it  also 
were,  could,  so  far,  not  be  called  ideal,  j^^r  ideality 
lies  in  the  disjoining  of  quality  from  being.  Hence 
the  common  view,  which  identifies  image  and  idea, 
is  fundamentally  in  error.  For  an  image  is  a  fact, 
just  as  real  as  any  sensation  ;  it  is  merely  a  fact  of 
another  kind  and  it  is  not  one  whit  more  ideal.  But 
an  idea  is  any  part  of  the  content  of  a  fact  so  far  as 
that  works  out  of  immediate  unity  with  its  existence. 
.And  an  idea's  factual  existence  may  consist  in  a 
sensation  or  perception,  just  as  well  as  in  an  image. 
The  main  point  and  the  essence  is  that  some  feature 
in  the  "  what  "  of  a  given  fact  should  be  alienated 
from  its  "  that "  so  far  as  to  work  beyond  it,  or  at 
all  events  loose  from  it.  Such  a  movement  is  ideal- 
ity, and,  where  it  is  absent,  there  is  nothing  ideal. 

We  can  understand  this  most  clearly  if  we  con- 
sider the  nature  of  judgment,  for  there  we  find 
thought  in  its  completed  form.  In  judgment  an  idea 
is  predicated  of  a  reality.  Now,  in  the  first  place, 
what  is  predicated  is  not  a  mental  image.  It  is  not 
a  fact  inside  my  head  which  the  judgment  wishes  to 
attach  to  another  fact  outside.  The  predicate  is  a 
mere  "  what,"  a  mere  feature  of  content,  which  is 
used  to  qualify  further  the  "  that "  of  the  subject. 
And  this  predicate  is  divorced  from  its  psychical 
existence  in    my    head,  and    is   used    without   any 


164 


REALITY. 


regard  to  its  being  there.  When  I  say  "  this  horse 
is  a  mammal,"  it  is  surely  absurd  to  suppose  that  I 
am  harnessing  my  mental  state  to  the  beast  between 
the  shafts.  Judgment  adds  an  adjective  to  reality, 
and  this  adjective  is  an  idea,  because  it  is  a  quality 
'  made  loose  from  its  own  existence,  and  is  working 
free  from  its  implication  with  that.  And,  even 
when  a  fact  is  merely  analysed, — when  the  predicate 
appears  not  to  go  beyond  its  own  subject,  or  to  have 
been  imported  divorced  from  another  fact  outside — 
our  account  still  holds  good.  For  here  obviously 
our  synthesis  is  a  re-union  of  the  distinguished,  and 
it  implies  a  separation,  which,  though  it  is  over- 
ridden, is  never  unmade.  The  predicate  is  a  con- 
tent which  has  been  made  loose  from  its  own 
immediate  existence  and  is  used  in  divorce  from 
that  first  unity.  And,  again,  as  predicated,  it  is 
applied  without  regard  to  its  own  being  as  abstracted 
and  in  my  head.  If  this  were  not  so,  there  would  be 
no  judgment ;  for  neither  distinction  nor  predication 
would  have  taken  place.  But  again,  if  it  is  so,  then 
once  more  here  we  discover  an  idea. 

And  in  the  second  place,  when  we  turn  to  the 
subject  of  the  judgment,  we  clearly  find  the  other 
aspect,  in  other  words,  the  "  that."  Just  as  in  "  this 
horse  is  a  mammal"  the  predicate  was  not  a  fact,  so 
most  assuredly  the  subject  is  an  actual  existence. 
And  the  same  thing  holds  good  with  every  judg- 
ment. No  one  ever  means  to  assert  about  anything 
but  reality,  or  to  do  anything  but  qualify  a  "that"  by 
a  "what"  And,  without  dwelling  on  a  point  which 
I  have  worked  out  elsewhere,'  I  will  notice  a  source 
of  possible  mistake.  "  The  subject,  at  all  events,"  I 
maybe  told,  "is  in  no  case  a  mere'\\\ax!  It  is 
never  bare  reality,  or  existence  without  character." 
And  to  this  I  fully  assent.  I  agree  that  the  subject 
which  we  mean— even  before  the  judgment  is  com- 


'    Principles  of  Logic,  l&ooV.    1. 


THOUGHT   AND    REALITY. 


>65 


L-yO- 


plete,    and   while   still   we  are  holding  its  elements , 
apart — is  more  than  a  mere  "  that."      But   then  this 
is  not  the  point.     The   point  is  whether  with  every 
judgment   we    do    not  find  an  aspect  of  existence, 
absent  from  the  predicate  but  present  in  the  subject, 
and  whether  in  the  synthesis  of  these  aspects  we 
have  not  got  the    essence   of  judgment.     And  for 
myself  I  see   no  way  of  avoiding  this  conclusion.  I 
Judgment   is  essentially  the  re-union  of  two  sides,! 
"  what  "  and  "  that,"   provisionally  estranged.     But 
it    is    the     alienation     of    these    aspects    in    whicl" 
thought's  ideality  consists. 

Truth  is  the  object  of  thinkinff,  and  the  aim  of 
truth  is  to  qualify  e.xistence  ideallvT  Its  end,  that 
2^  ■'1  rn  S'^"'  =■  f-hirnrtf-r  ^^  reality  "in  which  it  can 
resL.  Truth  is  the  predication  of  such  content  as, 
when  predicated,  is  harmonious,  and  removes  incon- 
sistency and  with  it  unrest.  And  because  the  given!  Jio*^ 
reality  is  never  consistent,  thought  is  compelled  toj"',*'**'*'  , 
take  the  road  of  indefinite  expansion.     If  thought  ]f    ^ 

were  successful,  it  would  have  a  predicate  consistent''^  yf^^ 
in  itself  and  agreeing  entirely  with  the  subject.     ^^^-J^^^^Zri^J 
on  the  other  hand,   the  predicate  must   be  alvvayst  x  t*4^_j=C| 
ideal.     It  must,  that  is,  be  a  "what"   not  in  unity        ''J 
with  its  own  "  that,"  and  therefore,  in  and  by  itself, 
'  devoid  of  existence.      Hence,   so  far  as   in  thought  I 
I  this  alienation  is  not  made  good,  thought  can  never) 
I  be  more  than  merely  ideal. 

I     I  shall  very  soon  proceed  to  dwell  on  this  last  con- 
isideration,  but  will  first  of  all  call  attention  to  a  most 
/important  point.     There  exists  a  notion  that  ideality 
j  is   something  outside  of  facts,  something   imported 
into  them,  or  imposed  as  a  sort  of  layer  above  them  ; 
and  we  talk  as  if  facts,  when  let  alone,  were   in   no, 
sense  ideal.      But  any  such  notion  is  illusory.      For 
facts  which  are  not  ideal,  and  which  show  no  loose- 
ness of  content  from  existence,  seem  hardly  actual 
They  would  be  found,  if  anywhere,  in  feelings  with- 
out internal  lapse,  and  with  a  content  wholly  single. 


1 66 


REALITY. 


But  if  we  keep  to  fact  which  is  given,  this  changes 
in  our  hands,  and  it  compels  us  to  perceive  incon- 
sistency of  content.  And  then  this  content  cannot 
be  referred  merely  to  its  given  "that,"  but  is  forced 
beyond  it,  and  is  made  to  qualify  something  outside. 
But,  if  so,  in  the  simplest  change  we  have  at  once 
ideality — the  use  of  content  in  separation  from  its 
actual  existence.  Indeed,  in  Chapters  ix.  and  x.  we 
have  already  seen  how  this  is  necessary.  For  the 
content  of  the  given  is  for  ever  relative  to  something 
not  given,  and  the  nature  of  its  "what"  is  hence  es- 
sentially to  transcend  its  "  that."  This  we  may  callj 
the  ideality  of  the  given  finite.  It  is  not  manufac- 
tured by  thought,  but  thought  itself  is  its  develop- 
ment and  product.  The  essentia!  nature  of  the  finite 
is  that  everywhere,  as  it  presents  itself,  its  character 
should  slide  beyond  the  limits  of  its  existence. 

And  truth,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  effort  to  heal 
this  disease,  as  it  were,  homoeopathically.  Thought 
has  to  accept,  without  reserve,  the  ideality  of  the 
"  given,"  its  want  of  consistency  and  its  self-transcen- 
dence. And  by  pushing  this  self-transcendence  to 
the  uttermost  point,  thought  attempts  to  find  there 
consummation  and  rest.  The  subject,  on  the  one 
b3J>d,  is  expanded  until  it  is  no  longer  what  is  given. 
It  becomes  the  whole  universe  which  presents  it- 
self and  which  appears  in  each  given  moment  with 
but  part  of  its  reahty.  It  grows  into  an  all-inclusive 
whole,  existing  somewhere  and  somehow,  if  we  only 
could  perceive  it.  But  on  the  other  hand,  in  quali- 
fying this  reality,  thought  consents  to  a  partial  ab- 
negation. It  has  to  recognise  the  division  of  the 
"  what "  from  the  "  that,"  and  it  cannot  so  join 
.  these  aspects  as  to  get  rid  of  mere  ideas  and  arrive 
/  at  actual  reality.  For  it  is  in  and  by  ideas  only  that 
thought  moves  and  has  life.  The  content  it  applies 
to  the  reality  has,  as  applied,  no  genuine  existence. 
It  is  an  adjective  divorced  from  its  "  that,"  and  never 
in  judgment,  even  when  the  judgment  is  complete, 


THOUGHT   AND    REALITY. 


167 


restored  to  solid  unity.  Thus  the  truth  belongs  to 
existence,  but  it  does  not  as  such  exist.  It  is  a 
character  which  indeed  reality  possesses,  but  a  char- 
acter which,  as  truth  and  as  ideal,  has  been  set  loose 
from  existence;  and  it  is  never  rejoined  to  it  in  such 
a  way  as  to  come  together  singly  and  make  fact. 
Hence,  truth  shows  a  dissection  and  never  an  actual 
life.  Its  predicate  can  never  be  equivalent  to  its 
subject.  And  if  it  became  so,  and  if  its  adjectives 
could  be  at  once  self-consistent  and  re-welded  to  ex- 
istence, it  would  not  be  truth  any  longer.  It  would 
have  then  passed  into  another  and  a  higher  reality. 

And  I  will  now  deal  with  the  misapprehension  to 
which  I  referred,  and  the  consideration  of  which  may, 
I  trust,  help  us  forward.' 

There  is  an  erroneous  idea  that,  if  reality  is  more 
than  thought,  thought  itself  is,  at  least,  quite  unable 
to  say  so.  To  assert  the  existence  of  anything  in 
any  sense  beyond  thought  suggests,  to  some  minds, 
the  doctrine    of  the    Thing- in-itself      And  of  the 

/  Thing-in-itself  we  know  (Chapter  xii.)  that  if  it  ex- 
isted  we  could  not  know  of  it ;  and,  again,  so  far  as 

I  we  know  of  it,  we  know  that  it  does  not  exist.     The 

\ attempt  to  apprehend  this  Other  in  succeeding  would 
|be  suicide,  and  in  suicide  could  not  reach  anything 
Ibeyond  total  failure.  Now,  though  I  have  urged 
)this  result,  1  wish  to  keep  it  within  rational  limits, 
and  I  dissent  wholly  from  the  corollary  that  nothing 
mor?  than  thought  exists.  But  to  think  of  anything 
which  can  exist  quite  outside  of  thought  1  agree  is  im- 
possible. If  thought  is  one  element  in  a  whole,  you 
cannot  argue  from  this  ground  that  the  remainder  of 

\such  a  whole  must  stand  apart  and  independent. 
From  this  ground,  in  short,  you  can  make  no  infer- 
ence to  a  Thing-in-itself  And  there  is  no  impossi- 
bility in  thought's  existing  as  an  element,  and   no 

'  The  remainder  of  this  chapter  has  been  reprinted,  with  some 
.^Iterations  and  omissions,  from  J//W,  No.  51. 


i68 


REALITY. 


self-contradiction  in  its  own  judgment  that  it  is  less  k, 
than  the  universe.  ^ 

We  have  seen  that  anything  real  has  two  aspects,  ■ 
existence  and  character,  and  that  tlwught  always  / 
must  work  within  this  distinction.  X'^ought,  in  its  ^ 
actual  processes  and  results,  cannot  transcend  the 
dualism  of  the  "  that  "  and  the  "  what."  I  do  not 
mean  that  in  no  sense  is  thought  beyond  this  dualism, 
or  that  thought  is  satisfied  with  it  and  has  no  desire 
for  something  better.  But  taking  judgment  to  be 
completed  thought,  I  mean  that  in  no  judgment  are  1 
the  subject  and  predicate  the  same.  In  every  | 
judgment  the  genuine  subject  is  reality,  which  goes 
beyond  the  |)redicate  and  of  which  the  predicate  is 
an  adjective.  And  I  would  urge  first  that,  in  desir- 
ing to  transcend  this  distinction,  thought  is  aiming  at 
suicide.  We  have  seen  that  in  judgment  we  find 
always  the  distinction  of  fact  and  truth,  of  idea  and 
reality.  Truth  and  thought  are  not  the  thing  itself, 
but  are  of  it  and  about  it.  Thought  predicates  an 
ideal  content  of  a  subject.  This  idea  is  not  the  same 
as  fact,  for  in  it  existence  and  meaning  are  neces- 
sarily divorced.  And  the  subject,  again,  is  neither 
the  mere  "  what  "  of  the  predicate,  nor  is  it  any  other 
mere  "  what."  Nor,  even  if  it  is  proposed  to  take  up 
a  whole  with  both  its  aspects,  and  to  predicate  the 
ideal  character  of  its  own  proper  subject,  will  that 
'  proposal  assist  us.  For  if  the  subject  is  the  same  as 
the  predicate,  why  trouble  oneself  to  judge  i*  But  if 
it  is  not  the  same,  then  what  is  it,  and  how  is  it  dif- 
ferent .''  Hither  then  there  is  no  judgment  at  all,  and 
but  a  pretence  of  thinking  without  thought,  or  there 
is  a  judgment,  but  its  subject  is  more  than  the  predi- 
cate, and  is  a  "that"  beyond  a  mere  "what."  The 
subject,  I  would  repeat,  is  never  mere  reality,  or  bare 
existence  without  character.  The  subject,  doubtless, 
has  unspecified  content  which  is  not  stated  in  the 
predicate.  For  judgment  is  the  differentiation  of  a 
complex  whole,  and   hence  always   is  analysis  and 


THOUGHT    AND    REALITY. 


169 


synthesis  in  one.  It  separates  an  element  from,  and 
restores  it  to,  the  concrete  basis ;  and  this  basis  of 
necessity  is  richer  than  the  mere  element  by  itself. 
But  then  this  is  not  the  question  which  concerns  us 
here.  That  question  is  whether,  in  any  judgment 
which  really  says  anything,  there  is  not  in  the  sub- 
ject an  aspect  of  existence  which  is  absent  from  the 
bare  predicate.  And  it  seems  clear  that  this  ques- 
tion must  be  answered  in  the  affirmative.  And  if  it 
is  urged  that  the  subject  itself,  being  in  thought, 
can  therefore  not  fall  beyond,  I  must  ask  for  more 
accuracy  ;  for  "  partly  beyond  "  appears  compatible 
with  "  partly  within."  And,  leaving  prepositions  to 
themselves,  I  must  recall  the  real  issue.  For  I  do 
not  deny  that  reality  is  an  object  of  thought ;  I  deny 
that  it  is  barely  and  ?ncn'/y  so.  If  you  rest  here  on 
a  distinction  between  thought  and  its  object,  that 
opens  a  further  question  to  which  I  shall  return 
(p.  174).  But  if  you  admit  that  in  asserting  reality 
to  fall  within  thought,  you  meant  that  in  reality 
there  is  nothing  beyond  what  is  made  thought's 
object,  your  position  is  untenable.  Reflect  upon  any 
judgment  as  long  as  you  please,  operate  upon  the 
subject  of  it  to  any  e.xtent  which  you  desire,  but  then 
(when  you  have  finished)  make  an  actual  judgment. 
And  when  that  is  made,  see  if  you  do  not  discover,  be- 
yond the  content  of  your  thought,  a  subject  of  which 
it  is  true,  and  which  it  does  not  comprehend.  You 
will  find  that  the  object  of  thought  in  the  end  must 
be  ideal,  and  that  there  is  no  idea  which,  as  such,  con- 
tains its  own  existence.  The  "  that "  of  the  actual 
subject  will  for  ever  give  a  something  which  is  not  a 
mere  idea,  something  which  is  different  from  any 
truth,  something  which  makes  such  a  difference  to 
your  thinking,  that  without  it  you  have  not  even 
thought  completely. 

"  But,"  it  may  be  answered,  "  the  thought  you 
speak  of  is  thought  that  is  not  perfect.  Where 
thought  is  perfect  there  is  no  discrepancy  between 


170 


REALITY. 


/ 


subject  and  predicate.  A  harmonious  system  of 
content  predicating  itself,  a  subject  self-conscious  in 
that  system  of  content,  this  is  what  thought  should 
mean.  And  here  the  division  of  existence  and  char- 
acter is  quite  healed  up.  If  such  completion  is  not 
actual,  it  is  possible,  and  the  possibility  is  enough." 
But  it  is  not  even  possible,  I  must  persist,  if  it  really 
is  unmeaning.  And  once  more  I  must  urge  the 
former  dilemma.  If  there  is  no  judgment,  there  is 
no  thought  ;  and  if  there  is  no  difference,  there  is  no 
judgment,  or  any  self-consciousness.  But  if,  on  the 
other  hand,  there  is  a  difference,  then  the  subject  is 
beyond  the  predicated  content. 

Still  a  mere  denial,  I  admit,  is  not  quite  satisfac- 
tory. Let  us  then  suppose  that  the  dualism  inherent 
in  thought  has  been  transcended.  Let  us  assume 
that  existence  is  no  longer  different  from  truth,  and 
let  us  see  where  this  takes  us.  It  takes  us  straight 
to  thought's  suicide.  A  system  of  content  is  going 
to  swallow  up  our  reality  ;  but  in  our  reality  we 
have  the  fact  of  sensible  experience,  immediate  pre- 
sentation with  its  colouring  of  pleasure  and  pain. 
Now  I  presume  there  is  no  question  of  conjuring 
this  fact  away ;  but  how  it  is  to  be  exhibited  as  an 
element  in  a  system  of  thought- content,  is  a  problem 
not  soluble.  Thought  is  relational  and  discursive, 
and,  if  it  ceases  to  be  this,  it  commits  suicide  ;  and 
yet,  if  it  remains  thus,  how  does  it  contain  immediate 
presentation .''  Let  us  suppose  the  impossible  ac- , 
complished  ;  let  us  imagine  a  harmonious  system  ol 
ideal  contents  united  by  relations,  and  reflecting  it- 
self in  self-conscious  harmony.  This  is  to  berealit)", 
all  reality ;  and  there  is  nothing  outside  it.  The 
delights  and  pains  of  the  flesh,  the  agonies  and  rap- 
tures of  the  soul,  these  are  fragmentary  meteors 
fallen  from  thought's  harmonious  system.  But  these 
burning  experiences — how  in  any  sense  can  they  be 
mere  pieces  of  thought's  heaven  .■*     For,  if  the  fall 


THOUGHT   AND    REALITY. 


J71 


is  real,  there  is  a  world  outside  tiiought's  region, 
and,  if  the  fall  is  apparent,  then  human  error  itself  is 
not  included  there.  Heaven,  in  brief,  must  either 
not  be  heaven,  or  else  not  all  reality.  Without  a 
metaphor,  feeling  belongs  to  perfect  thought,  or  it 
does  not  If  it  does  not,  there  is  at  once  a  side  of 
existence  beyond  thought.  But  if  it  does  belong, 
then  thought  is  different  from  thought  discursive 
and  relational.  To  make  it  include  immediate  ex 
perience,  its  character  must  be  transformed.  Itl 
must  cease  to  predicate,  it  must  get  beyond  mere 
relations,  it  must  reach  something  other  than  truth. 
Thought,  in  a  word,  must  have  been  absorbed  into 
a  higher  intuition.  Now  such  an  experience  may 
be  called  thought,  if  you  choose  to  use  that  word. 
But  if  any  one  else  prefers  another  term,  such  as 
feeling  or  will,  he  would  be  equally  justified.  For 
the  result  is  a  whole  state  which  both  includes  and 
goes  beyond  each  element ;  and  to  speak  of  it  as 
simply  one  of  them  seems  playing  with  phrases. 
For  (I  must  repeat  it)  when  thought  begins  to  be 
more  than  relational,  it  ceases  to  be  mere  thinking. 
A  basis,  from  which  the  relation  is  thrown  out  and 
into  which  it  returns,  is  something  not  exhausted  by 
that  relation.  It  will,  in  short,  be  an  existence 
which  is  not  mere  truth.  Thus,  in  reaching  a  whole 
which  can  contain  every  aspect  within  it,  thought 
must  absorb  what  divides  it  from  feeling  and  will. 
But  when  these  all  have  come  together,  then,  since 
none  of  them  can  perish,  they  must  be  merged  in  a 
whole  in  which  they  are  harmonious.  But  that 
whole  assuredly  is  not  simply  one  of  its  aspects. 
And  the  question  is  not  whether  the  universe  is  in 
any  sense  intelligible.  The  question  is  whether,  if 
you  thought  it  and  understood  it,  there  would  be  no 
difference  left  between  your  thought  and  the  thing 
And,  supposing  that  to  have  happened,  the  question 
is  then  whether  thought  has  not  changed  its  nature. 
Let   us  try  to   realize    more    distinctly  what  thia| 


•'f' 


REALITY. 


supposed  consummation  would  involve.  Since  both 
truth  and  fact  are  to  be  there,  nothing  must  be  lost, 
and  in  the  Absolute  we  must  keep  every  item  of  our 
experience.  We  cannot  have  less,  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  may  have  much  more;  and  this  more  may 
so  supplement  the  elements  of  our  actual  experience 
that  in  the  whole  they  may  become  transformed. 
But  to  reach  a  mode  of  apprehension,  which  is  quite 
identical  with  reality,  surely  predicate  and  subject, 
and  subject  and  object,  and  in  short  the  whole  rela- 
tional form,  must  be  merged.  The  Absolute  does 
not  want,  I  presume,  to  make  eyes  at  itself  in  a 
mirror,  or,  like  a  squirrel  in  a  cage,  to  revolve  the 
circle  of  its  perfections.  Such  processes  must  be 
dissolved  in  something  not  poorer  but  richer  thar» 
themselves.  And  feeling  and  will  must  also  be 
transmuted  in  this  whole,  into  which  thought  has 
entered.  Such  a  whole  state  would  possess  in  a 
superior  form  that  immediacy  which  we  find  (more 
or  less)  in  feeling  ;  and  in  this  whole  all  divisions 
would  be  healed  up.  It  would  be  experience  entire, 
containing  all  elements  in  harmony.  Thought  would 
be  present  in  a  higher  intuition  ;  will  would  be  there 
where  the  ideal  had  become  reality  ;  and  beauty  and 
pleasure  and  feeling  would  live  on  in  this  total  fulfil- 
ment. Every  flame  of  passion,  chaste  or  carnal, 
would  still  burn  in  the  Absolute  unquenched  and 
unabridged,  a  note  absorbed  in  the  harmony  of  its 
higher  bliss.  We  cannot  imagine,  I  adniit,  how  in 
detail  this  can  be.  But  if  truth  and  fact  are  to  be 
one,  then  in  some  such  way  thought  must  reach  its 
consummation.  But  in  that  consummation  thought 
has  certainly  been  so  transformed,  that  to  go  oiv 
calling  it  thought  seems  indefensible. 


I  have  tried  to  show  first  that,  in  the  proper  sense 
of  thought,  thought  and  fact  are  not  the  same.  I 
have  urged,  in  the  second  place,  that,  if  their  iden- 
tity is  worked  out,  thought  ends  in  a  reality  which 


THOUGHT   AND    REAXITY. 


Hi 


swallows  up  its  character.  I  will  ask  next  whether 
thought's  advocates  can  find  a  barrier  to  their  client's 
happy  suicide. 

They  might  urge,  first,  that  our  consummation  is 
the  Thing-in-itself,  and  that  it  makes  thought  know 
■what  essentially  is  not  knowable.  But  this  objection 
forgets  that  our  whole  is  not  anything  but  sentient 
experience.  And  it  forgets  that,  even  when  we 
understand  by  "  thought  "  its  strict  discursive  form, 
our  reality  does  not  exist  apart  from  this.  Empha- 
tically the  Absolute  is  nothing  if  taken  apart  from 
any  single  one  of  its  elements.  But  the  Thing-in- 
self,  on  the  other  hand,  must  exist  apart. 

Let  us  pass  to  another  objection  against  our  view. 
We  may  be  told  that  the  End,  because  it  is  that 
which  thought  aims  at,  is  therefore  itself  (mere) 
thought.  This  assumes  that  thought  cannot  desire 
a  consummation  in  which  it  is  lost.  But  does  not 
the  river  run  into  the  sea,  and  the  self  lose  itself  in 
love  ?  And  further,  as  good  a  claim  for  predomin- 
ance might  be  made  on  behalf  of  will,  and  again  on 
behalf  of  beauty  and  sensation  and  pleasure.  Where 
all  elements  reach  their  end  in  the  Absolute,  that 
end  can  belong  to  no  one  severally.  We  may  illus- 
trate this  principle  by  the  case  of  morality.  That 
essentially  desires  an  end  which  is  not  merely  moral 
because  it  is  super-moral.  Nay,  even  personality 
itself,  our  whole  individual  life  and  striving,  tends  to 
something  beyond  mere  personality.  Of  course, 
the  Absolute  has  personality,  but  it  fortunately 
possesses  so  much  more,  that  to  call  it  personal 
> would  be  as  absurd  as  to  ask  if  it  is  moral.' 

But  in  self-consciousness,  I  may  be  told,  we 
actually  experience  a  state  where  truth  and  being 
are  identical  ;  and  here,  at  all  events,  thinking  is  not 
different  from  reality.  But  in  our  tenth  chapter  we 
have  seen  that  no  such  state  exists.     There  is  no 


See  further,  Chapters  xxv.  and  xxvii. 


'74 


REALITY. 


self-consciousness  in  which  the  object  is  the  same  as 
the  subject,  none  in  which  what  is  perceived  ex- 
hausts the  whole  self.  In  self-consciousness  a  part 
or  element,  or  again  a  general  aspect  or  character, 
becomes  distinct  from  the  whole  mass  and  stands  over 
against  the  felt  background.  But  the  background  is 
never  exhausted  by  this  object,  and  it  never  could  be 
so.  An  experiment  should  convince  any  man  that  in 
self-consciousness  what  he  feels  cannot  wholly  come 
before  him.  It  can  be  exhausted,  if  at  all,  only  by 
a  long  series  of  observations,  and  the  summed  result 
of  these  observations  cannot  be  experienced  as  a 
fact  Such  a  result  cannot  ever  be  verified  as  quite 
true  at  any  particular  given  moment.  In  short  con- 
sciousness implies  discrimination  of  an  element  from 
the  felt  mass,  and  a  consciousness  that  should  dis- 
criminate every  element  at  once  is  psychological!) 
impossible.  And  this  impossibility,  if  it  became 
actual,  would  still  leave  us  held  in  a  dilemma.  Foi 
there  is  either  no  difference,  and  therefore  no  dis- 
tinction, and  no  consciousness  ;  or  there  is  a  distinc- 
tion, and  therefore  a  difference  between  object  and 
[reality.  But  surely,  if  self-consciousness  is  appealed 
Ito,  it  is  evident  that  at  any  moment  I  am  more  than 
'the  self  which  I  can  think  of.  How  far  everything 
in  feeling  may  be  called  intelligible,  is  not  the  ques- 
tion here.  But  what  is  felt  cannot  be  understood  sc 
that  its  truth  and  its  existence  become  the  same. 
And,  if  that  were  possible,  yet  such  a  process  would 
certainly  not  be  thinking. 

In  thinking  the  subject  which  thinks  is  more  than 
thought.  And  that  is  why  we  can  imagine  that  in 
thinking  we  find  all  reality.  But  in  the  same  way 
the  whole  reality  can  as  well  be  found  in  feeling  or 
in  volition.  Each  is  one  element  in  the  whole,  or 
the  whole  in  one  of  its  aspects  ;  and  hence,  when 
you  get  an  aspect  or  element,  you  have  the  whljle 
with  it.  But  because,  given  one  aspect  (whichever 
it  may  be),  we  find  the  whole  universe,  to  conclude 


THOUGHT    AND    REALITY. 


175 


that  in   the  universe  there  is   nothing  beyond  this 
single  aspect,  seems  quite  irrational. 

But  the  reader  may  agree  that  no  one  really  can 
believe  that  mere  thought  includes  everything.  The 
difficulty  lies,  he  may  urge,  in  fnaintaining  the  oppo- 
site. Since  in  philosophy  we  must  think,  how  is  it 
possible  to  transcend  thought  without  a  self-contra- 
diction ?  For  theory  can  reflect  on,  and  pronounce 
about,  all  things,  and  in  reflecting  on  them  it  there 
fore  includes  them.  So  that  to  maintain  in  thought 
an  Other  is  by  the  same  act  to  destroy  its  otherness 
and  to  persist  is  to  contradict  oneself.  While  admit 
ting  that  thought  cannot  satisfy  us  as  to  reality's 
falling  wholly  within  its  limits,  we  may  be  told  that, 
so  long  as  we  think,  we  must  ignore  this  admission. 
And  the  question  is,  therefore,  whether  philosophy 
does  not  end  in  sheer  scepticism — in  the  necessity, 
that  is,  of  asserting  what  it  is  no  less  induced  to 
deny.  The  problem  is  serious,  and  I  will  now  at- 
tempt to  exhibit  its  solution. 

We  maintain  an  Other  than  mere  thought.  Now 
in  what  sense  do  we  hold  this  .■'  Thought  being  a 
judgment,  we  say  that  the  predicate  is  never  the  same 
as  the  subject  ;  for  the  subject  is  reality  presented  as 
"  this  "  (we  must  not  say  as  mere  "  this  ").  You 
can  certainly  abstract  from  presentation  its  character 
of  "  thisness,"  or  its  confused  relatedness  ;  and  you 
can  also  abstract  the  feature  of  presentation.  Of 
these  you  can  make  ideas,'  for  there  is  nothing 
which  you  cannot  think  of.  But  you  find  that  these 
ideas  are  not  the  same  as  the  subject  of  which  you 
must  predicate  them.  You  can  think  of  the  subject, 
but  you  cannot  get  rid  of  it,  or  substitute  mere 
thought-content  for  it.  In  other  words,  in  practice 
\  thought  always  is  found  with,  and  appears  to  de- 
'  mand,  an  Other. 


•\ 


PrincipUi  oj  Logic,  pp.  64-69. 


176 


REALITY. 


f\ 


Now  the  question  is  whether  this  leads  to  self- 
contradiction.  If  thought  asserted  the  existence  of 
any  content  which  was  not  an  actual  or  possible 
object  of  thought — certainly  that  assertion  in  my 
judgment  would  contradict  itself.  But  the  Other, 
which  I  maintain,  is  not  any  such  content,  nor  is  it 
another  separated  "  what,"  nor  in  any  case  do  I 
suggest  that  it  lies  outside  intelligence.  Everything, 
all  will  and  feeling,  is  an  object  for  thought,  and 
must  be  called  intelligible.'  This  is  certain  ;  but,  if 
so,  what  becomes  of  the  Other  ?  If  we  fall  back  on 
the  mere  "that,"  thatness  itself  seems  a  distinction 
made  by  thought.  And  we  have  to  face  this  diffi- 
culty :  If  the  Other  exists,  it  must  be  something  ; 
and  if  it  is  nothing,  it  certainly  does  not  exist. 

Let  us  take  an  actual  judgment  and  examine  the 
subject  there  with  a  view  to  find  our  Other.  In  this 
we  at  once  meet  with  a  complication.  We  always 
have  more  content  in  the  presented  subject  than  in 
the  predicate,  and  it  is  hence  harder  to  realize  what, 
beside  this  overplus  of  content,  the  subject  possesses. 
However,  passing  this  by,  we  can  find  in  the  sub- 
ject two  special  characters.  There  is  first  (a)  sensu- 
ous infinitude,  and  (3)  in  the  second  place  there  is 
immediacy. 

(a)  The  presented  subject  has  a  detail  which  is 
unlimited.  By  this  I  do  not  mean  that  the  actual 
plurality  of  its  features  exceeds  a  finite  number.  I 
mean  that  its  detail  always  goes  beyond  itself,  and 
is  indefinitely  relative  to  something  outside.^  In  its 
given  content  it  has  relations  which  do  not  terminate 
within  that  content ;  and  its  existence  therefore  is 
not  exhausted  by  itself,  as  we  ever  can  have  it.  If 
I  I  may  use  the  metaphor,  it  has  always  edges  which 
are  ragged  in  such  a  way  as  to  imply  another  exist- 
ence from  which  it  has  been  torn,  and  without  which 

I  On  this  point  see  below,  Chapters  xix.  and  xxvi. 
'  This  sensible  "  infinite  "  is  the  s.ime  as   the  finite,  which  we 
Just  saw  was  in  its  essence  "  ideal." 


THOUGHT   AND    KEALITV. 


177 


it  really  does  not  exist.  Thus  the  content  of  the\ 
subject  strives,  we  may  say,  unsuccessfully  towards  ' 
an  all-inclusive  whole.  Now  the  predicate,  on  its 
side,  is  itself  not  free  from  endlessness.  For  its 
content,  abstracted  and  finite,  necessarily  depends  on 
relation  to  what  is  beyond.  But  it  lacks  the  sensible 
and  compulsory  detail  of  the  subject.  It  is  not 
given  as  one  thing  with  an  actual  but  indefinite  con- 
text. And  thus,  at  least  ostensibly,  the  predicate  is 
hostile  to  endlessness. 

(1^)  This  is  one  difference,  and  the  second  consists 
in  immediacy.  The  subject  claims  the  character  of 
a  single  self-subsistent  being.  1  n  it  the  aspects  of 
"  what  "  and  "  that  "  are  not  taken  as  divorced,  but 
it  is  given  with  its  content  as  forming  one  integral 
whole.  The  "what"  is  not  sundered  from  the 
"  that,"  and  turned  from  fact  into  truth.  It  is  not 
predicated  as  the  adjective  of  another  "  that,"  or 
even  of  its  own.  And  this  character  of  immediacy 
is  plainly  not  consistent  with  endlessness.  They 
are,  in  truth,  each  an  imperfect  appearance  of  Indi- 
viduality.' But  the  subject  clearly  possesses  both 
these  discrepant  features,  while  the  predicate  no  less 
clearly  should  be  without  them.  For  the  predicate 
seeks  also  for  individuality  but  by  a  different  road. 

Now,  if  we  take  the  subject  to  have  these  two 
characters  which  are  absent  from  the  predicate,  and 
if  the  desire  of  thought  implies  removal  of  that 
which  makes  predicate  and  subject  differ — we  begin 
to  perceive  the  nature  of  our  Other.  And  we  may 
see  at  once  what  is  required  in  order  to  extinguish 
its  otherness.  Subject  and  predicate  alike  must 
accept  reformation.  The  ideal  content  of  the  predi- 
cate must  be  made  consistent  with  immediate  indi- 
viduality ;  and,  on  its  side,  the  subject  must  be 
changed  so  as  to  become  consistent  with  itself.  It 
must  become  a  self-subsistent,  and  that  means  an 


*  Compare  here  the  doctrine  of  CLapters  xix.  and  xxiv. 

A.  R.  N 


178 


REALITY. 


all-inclusive,  individual.      But  these  reforms  are  im- 
I  possible.    The  subject  must  pass  into  the  judgment, 
/  and   it  becomes  infected  with  the  relational   form. 
/  The  self-dependence  and  immediacy,  which  it  claims, 
/    are  not  possessed  by  its  content.       Hence  in  the 
/     attempted  self-assertion  this  content  drives  the  sub- 
/     ject  beyond  actual  limits,  and  so  begets  a  process 
/      which  is  infinite  and  cannot  be  exhausted.     Thus 
\      thought's  attempt  wholly  to  absorb  the  subject  must 
v.    fail.     It  fails  because   it  cannot  reform   the  subject 
so  as  to  include  and  exhaust   its  content.     And,  in 
the  second  place,  thought  fails  because  it  cannot  re- 
form itself      For,  if  per  impossibile  the  exhausted 
content  were   comprised    within    a    predicate,    that 
predicate  still   couid  not  bear  the  character  of  im- 
mediacy.     I  will  dwell  for  a  little  on  both  points. 

Let  us  consider  first  the  subject  that  is  presented. 
It  is  a  confused  whole  that,  so  far  as  we  make  it  an 
object,  passes  into  a  congeries  of  qualities  and  rela- 
tions. And  thought  desires  to  transform  this  con- 
geries into  a  system.  But,  to  understand  the  subject. 
we  have  at  once  to  pass  outside  it  in  time,  and 
again  also  in  space.  On  the  other  hand  these 
external  relations  do  not  end,  and  from  their  own 
nature  they  cannot  end.  Exhaustion  is  not  merely 
impracticable,  it  is  essentially  impossible.  And  this 
obstacle  would  be  enough  ;  but  this  is  not  all.  In- 
side the  qualities,  which  we  took  first  as  solid  end- 
points  of  the  relations,  an  infinite  process  breaks 
out.  In  order  to  understand,  we  are  forced  to  dis- 
tinguish without  end  ;  for  we  never  get  to  that  which 
is  apart  from  further  distinction.  Or  we  may  put 
the  difficulty  otherwise  thus.  We  can  neither  take 
the  terms  with  their  relations  as  a  whole  that  is  self- 
evident,  that  stands  by  itself,  and  that  calls  for  no 
V  further  account ;  nor,  on  the  other  side,  when  we 
distinguish,  can  we  avoid  the  endless  search  for  the 
relation  between  the  relation  and  its  terms.' 

•  For  this  see  above,  Chapter  iii.  » 


THOUGHT    AND    REALITl^l 


Thus  thought  cannot  get  the  content  into  a  har- 
monious system.     And  in  the  next  place,  even  if  it 
did  so,  that  system  would   not  be  the  subject      It 
would  either  be  a  maze  of  relations,  a  maze  with 
a  plan,  of  which  for  ever  we  made  the  circuit  ;  or 
otherwise  it  would  wholly  lose  the  relational    form. 
Our  impossible  process,  in  the   first   place,  would 
assuredly  have  truth  distinguished  from   its  reality. 
For  it  could  avoid  this  only  by  coming  to  us  bodily 
and  all  at  once,  and,  further,  by  suppressing  entirely 
any  distinction  between  subject  and  predicate.     But,  \ 
if  in  this  way  thought   became  immediate,  it  would  I 
lose  its  own  character.      It  would  be  a  system  of  I 
relations  no  longer,  but  would  have  become  an  in-y 
tuition.      In  this  case  the  Other  would  certainly  have 
been  absorbed  ;  but  thought    itself   no   less  would 
have    been    swallowed     up    and    resolved    into   an 
Other. 

Thought's  relational  content  can  never  be  the 
same  as  the  subject,  either  as  that  subject  appears 
or  as  it  really  is.  The  reality  that  is  presented  is 
taken  up  by  thought  in  a  form  not  adequate  to  its 
nature,  and  beyond  which  its  nature  must  appear  a 
an  Other.  But,  to  come  at  last  in  full  view  of  th 
solution  of  our  problem,  this  nature  also  is  the  natur 
which  thought  wants  for  itself.  It  is  the  characte 
which  even  mere  thinking  desires  to  possess,  an 
which  in  all  its  aspects  exists  within  thought  already, 
though  in  an  incomplete  form.  And  our  main  result 
is  briefly  this.  The  end,  which  would  satisfy  mere 
truth-seeking,  would  do  so  just  because  it  had  the 
features  possessed  by  reality.  It  would  have  to  be 
an  immediate,  self-dependent,  all-inclusive  individ 
ual.  But,  in  reaching  this  perfection,  and  in  tb 
act  of  reaching  it,  thought  would  lose  its  own  charj 
acter.  Thought  does  desire  such  individuality,  thai 
is  precisely  what  it  aims  at.  But  individuality,  on 
the  other  hand,  cannot  be  gained  while  we  are  con 
fined  to  relations. 


Y 


i8o 


KtALlTY. 


\ 


Still  we  may  be  told  that  we  are  far  from  the  solu- 
tion of  our  problem.     The  fact  of  thought's  desiring  i 
a  foreign   perfection,  we   may  hear,  is  precisely  the  I 
old  difficulty.      If  thought  desires  this,  then  it  is  no/ 
Other,  for  we  desire    only  what    we    know.     The/ 
object  of  thought's  desire  cannot,  hence,  be  a  foreign 
object ;    for   what    is    an    object  is,    therefore,    not 
foreign.      But    we    reply  that   we  have    penetrated 
below  the  surface  of  any  such   dilemma.     Thought 
desires  for  its  content  the  character  which  make 
reality.     These  features,  if  realized,  would   destroy 
mere  thought ;  and  hence  they  are  an  Other  beyonc 
thought.       But    thought,    nevertheless,    can    desire 
them,  because  its   content  has  them  already  in  an 
incomplete  form.     And  in  desire  for  the  completior* 
of  what  one  has  there  is  no  contradiction.      Here  is 
the  solution  of  our  difficulty. 

The  relational  form  is  a  compromise  on  which 
thought  stands,  and  which  it  developes.  It  is  an 
attempt  to  unite  differences  which  have  broken  out 
of  the  felt  totality.'  Differences  forced  together  bj' 
an  underlying  identity,  and  a  compromise  between 
the  plurality  and  the  unity — this  is  the  essence  of 
relation.  But  the  differences  remain  independent, 
for  they  cannot  be  made  to  resolve  themselves  into 
their  own  relation.  For,  if  so,  they  would  perish, 
and  their  relation  would  perish  with  them.  Or, 
otherwise,  their  outstanding  plurality  would  still 
remain  unreconciled  with  their  unity,  and  so  within 
the  relation  would  beget  the  infinite  process.  The 
relation,  on  the  other  side,  does  not  exist  beyond  the 
terms  ;  for,  in  that  case,  itself  would  be  a  new  term 
which  would  aggravate  the  distraction.  But  again, 
it  cannot  lose  itself  within  the  terms  ;  for,  if  so, 
where  is  their  common  unity  and  their  relation  .■* 
They  would  in  this  case  not  be  related,  but  would 
fall    apart.     Thus  the  whole    relational   perception 


'  On  tliis  point  see  Chapter  iii. 


THOUGHT   AND    KEALITV. 


181 


joins  various  characters.  It  has  the  feature  of  im- 
mediacy and  self-dependence ;  for  the  terms  are 
i(iven  to  it  and  not  constituted  by  it  It  possesses 
again  the  character  of  plurality.  And  as  represent- 
ing the  primitive  felt  whole,  it  has  once  more  the 
character  of  a  comprehending  unity — a  unity,  how- 
I  ver,  not  constituted  by  the  differences,  but  added 
from  without.  And,  even  against  its  wish,  it  has 
turther  a  restless  infinitude  ;  for  such  infinitude  is 
the  very  result  of  its  practical  compromise.  And 
thought  desires,  retaining  these  features,  to  reduce 
them  to  harmony.  It  aims  at  an  all  inclusive  whole, 
not  in  conflict  with  its  elements,  and  at  elements 
subordinate  to  a  self-dependent  whole.  Hence 
neither  the  aspect  of  unity,  nor  of  plurality,  nor  of 
both  these  features  in  one,  is  really  foreign  to 
thought.  There  is  nothing  foreign  that  thought 
■wants  in  desiring  to  be  a  whole,  to  comprehend 
•everything,  and  yet  to  include  and  be  superior  to 
discord.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  such  a  completion, 
as  we  have  seen,  would  prove  destructive  ;  such  an 
■end  would  emphatically  make  an  end  of  mere 
thought  It  would  bring  the  ideal  content  into  a 
form  which  would  be  reality  itself,  and  where  mere 
truth  and  mere  thought  would  certainly  perish. 
Thought  seeks  to  possess  in  its  object  that  whole 
character  of  which  it  already  owns  the  separate 
features.  These  features  it  cannot  combine  satis- 
factorily, though  it  has  the  idea,  and  even  the  partial 
experience,  of  their  complete  combination.  And,  if 
the  object  were  made  perfect,  it  would  forthwith 
becotne  reality,  but  would  cease  forthwith  to  be 
an  object.  It  is  this  completion  of  thought  be- 
yond thought  which  remains  for  ever  an  Other. 
Thought  can  form  the  idea  of  an  apprehension, 
something  like  feeling  in  directness,  which  contains 
all  the  character  sought  by  its  relational  efforts. 
Thought  can  understand  that,  to  reach  its  goal,  it 
must  get  beyond  relations.     Yet  in  its  nature  it  can 


l82 


REALITY. 


find  no  other  working  means  of  progress.  Hence  it 
perceives  that  somehow  this  relational  side  of  its 
nature  must  be  merged  and  must  include  somehow 
the  other  side.  Such  a  fusion  would  compel  thought 
to  lose  and  to  transcend  its  proper  self  And  the 
nature  of  this  fusion  thought  can  apprehend  in 
vague  generality,  but  not  in  detail ;  and  it  can  see 
the  reason  why  a  detailed  apprehension  is  impos- 
sible. Such  anticipated  self-transcendence  ts  an 
Other  :  but  to  assert  that  Other  is  noi  a  self-con- 
tradiction. V 
Hence  in  our  Absolute  thought  can  find  its  OtheAXj>  > 
without  inconsistency.  The  entire  reality  wilt  be 
merely  the  object  thought  out,  but  thought  out  in 
such  a  way  that  mere  thinking  is  absorbed.  This 
same  reality  will  be  feeling  that  is  satisfied  com- 
pletely. In  its  direct  experience  we  get  restored 
with  interest  every  feature  lost  by  the  disruption  of 
our  primitive  felt  whole.  We  possess  the  immediacy 
and  the  strength  of  simple  apprehension,  no  longer 
forced  by  its  own  inconsistencies  to  pass  into  the 
infinite  process.  And  again  volition,  if  willed  out, 
becomes  our  Absolute.  For  we  reach  there  the 
identity  of  idea  and  reality,  not  too  poor  but  too  rich 
for  division  of  its  elements.  Feeling,  thought,  and 
volition  have  all  defects  which  suggest  something 
higher.  But  in  that  higher  unity  no  fraction  of  any- 
thing is  lost.  For  each  one-sided  aspect,  to  gain 
itself,  blends  with  that  which  seemed  opposite,  and 
the  product  of  this  fusion  keeps  the  riches  of  all. 
The  one  reality,  we  may  say  from  our  human  point 
of  view,  was  present  in  each  aspect,  in  a  form  which 
does  not  satisfy.  To  work  out  its  full  nature  it  has 
sunk  itself  Into  these  differences.  But  in  each  it 
longs  for  that  absolute  self-fruition  which  comes 
only  when  the  self  bursts  its  limits  and  blends  with 
another  finite  self.  This  desire  of  each  element  for 
a  perfection  which  implies  fusion  with  others,  is  not 
self-contradictory.     It  is  rather  an  effort  to  remove 


THOUGHT   AND    REALITY. 


'83 


a  present  state  of  inconsistency,  to  remain  in  which 
would  indeed  be  fixed  self-contradiction. 

Now,  if  it  is  objected  that  such  an  Absolute  is  the 
Thing-in-itself,  1  must  doubt  if  the  objector  can 
understand.  How  a  whole  which  comprehends 
everything  can  deserve  that  title  is  past  my  conjec- 
ture. And,  if  I  am  told  that  the  differences  are  lost 
in  this  whole,  and  yet  the  differences  are,  and  must 
therefore  be  left  outside — I  must  reply  to  this  charge 
by  a  counter-charge  of  thoughtless  confusion.  For 
the  differences  are  not  lost,  but  are  all  contained  in 
the  whole.  The  fact  that  tnore  is  included  there 
than  these  several,  isolated,  differences  hardly  proves 
that  these  differences  are  not  there  at  all.  When  an 
element  is  joined  to  another  in  a  whole  of  experi- 
ence, then,  on  the  whole,  and  for  the  whole,  their 
mere  specialities  need  not  exist ;  but,  none  the  less, 
each  element  in  its  own  partial  experience  may  rei 
tain  its  own  speciality.  "  Yes ;  but  these  partia 
experiences,"  I  may  be  told,  "  will  at  all  events  fall 
outside  the  whole."  Surely  no  such  consequence 
follows.  The  self-consciousness  of  the  part,  its  con- 
sciousness of  itself  even  in  opposition  to  the  whole — 
all  will  be  contained  within  the  one  absorbing 
experience.  For  this  will  embrace  all  self-con- 
sciousness harmonized,  though,  as  such,  transmuted 
and  suppressed.  We  cannot  possibly  construe,  I 
admit,  such  an  experience  to  ourselves.  We  cannot 
imagine  how  in  detail  its  outline  is  filled  up.  But  to 
say  that  it  is  real,  and  that  it  unites  certain  general 
characters  within  the  living  system  of  one  undivided 
apprehension,  is  within  our  power.  The  assertion 
of  this  Absolute's  reality  I  hope  in  the  sequel  to 
justify.  Here  (if  I  have  not  failed)  I  have  shown 
that,  at  least  from  the  point  of  view  of  thinking,  it 
is  free  from  self-contradiction.  The  justification  for 
thought  of  an  Other  may  help  both  to  explain  and 
to  bury  the  Thing-in-itself. 


CHAPTER   XVI. 


ERROR. 


We  have  so  far  sketched  in  outline  the  Absolute 
which  we  have  been  forced  to  accept,  and  we  have 
pointed  out  the  general  way  in  which  thought  may 
fall  within  it.  We  must  address  ourselves  now  to  a 
series  of  formidable  objections.  If  our  Absolute  is 
possible  in  itself,  it  seems  hardly  possible  as  things 
are.  For  there  are  undeniable  facts  with  which  it 
does  not  seem  compatible.  Error  and  evil,  space, 
time,  chance  and  mutability,  and  the  unique  particu- 
larity of  the  "this"  and  the  "mine" — all  these 
appear  to  fall  outside  an  individual  Intuition.  To 
explain  them  away  or  to  e.xplain  them,  one  of  these 
courses  seems  necessary,  and  yet  both  seem  impos- 
sible. And  this  is  a  point  on  which  I  am  anxious 
to  be  clearly  understood.  I  reject  the  offered 
dilemma,  and  deny  the  necessity  of  a  choice  be- 
tween these  two  courses.  I  fully  recognise  the 
facts,  I  do  not  make  the  smallest  attempt  to  explain 
their  origin,  and  I  emphatically  deny  the  need  for 
such  an  explanation.  In  the  first  place  to  show  how 
and  why  the  universe  is  so  that  finite  existence 
belongs  to  it.  is  utterly  impossible.  That  would 
imply  an  understanding  of  the  whole  not  practicable 
for  a  mere  part  It  would  mean  a  view  by  the  finite 
from  the  Absolute's  point  of  view,  and  in  that  con- 
summation the  finite  would  have  been  transmuted 
and  destroyed.  But,  in  the  second  place,  such  an 
understanding  is  wholly  unnecessary.  We  have 
not  to  choose  between   accounting  for  everything 


ERROR. 


'«5 


( 


on  one  side  and  on  the  other  side  admitting  it  as  a 
disproof  of  our  doctrine  of  the  Absolute.  Such  an 
alternative  is  not  logical.  If  you  wish  to  refute  a 
wide  theory  based  on  general  grounds,  it  is  idle 
merely  to  produce  facts  which  upon  it  are  not  ex- 
plained. For  the  inability  to  explain  these  may  be 
simply  our  failure  in  particular  information,  and  it 
need  imply  nothing  worse  than  confirmation  lacking 
to  the  theory.  The  facts  become  an  objection  to  the 
doctrine  when  they  are  incompatible  with  some  part 
of  it ;  white,  if  they  merely  remain  outside,  that  points 
to  incompleteness  in  detail  and  not  falsity  in  prin- 
ciple. A  general  doctrine  is  not  destroyed  by  what 
we  fail  to  understand.  It  is  destroyed  only  by  that 
which  we  actually  do  understand,  and  can  show  to 
be  inconsistent  and  discrepant  with  the  theory 
adopted. 

And  this  is  the  real  issue  here.  Error  and  evil 
are  no  disproof  of  our  absolute  intuition  so  long  as 
we  merely  fail  to  see  how  in  detail  it  comprehends 
them.  They  are  a  disproof  when  their  nature  is 
understood  in  such  a  way  as  to  collide  with  the 
Absolute.  And  the  question  is  whether  this  under- 
standing of  them  is  correct.  It  is  here  that  I 
confidently  join  issue.  If  on  this  subject  there 
exists  a  false  persuasion  of  knowledge,  I  urge  that 
it  lies  on  the  side  of  the  objector.  I  maintain  that 
we  know  nothing  of  these  various  forms  of  the 
finite  which  shows  them  incompatible  with  that 
Absolute,  for  the  accepting  of  which  we  have 
general  ground.  And  I  meet  the  denial  of  this 
position  by  pointing  out  assumed  knowledge  where 
really  there  is  ignorance.  It  is  the  objector  who, 
if  any  one,  asserts  omniscience.  It  is  he  who  claims 
to  understand  both  the  infinite  and  the  finite,  so 
as  to  be  aware  and  to  be  assured  of  their  incompati- 
bility. And  I  think  that  he  much  overestimates 
the  extent  of  human  power.  We  cannot  know  that 
the  finite  is  in  collision  with  the  Absolute.     And  if 


1 86 


REALITY. 


we  cannot,  and  if,   for  all  we  understand,   the  two- 
are  at  one  and  harmonious — then  our  conclusion  is- 
proved   fully.      For  we  have   a  general  assurance  I 
that  reality  has  a  certain  nature,  and,  on  the  other  j 
side,  against  that  assurance  we  have  to  set  nothing,  , 
nothing  other  than  our  ignorance.      But  an  assur-/ 
ance,  against  which  there  is  nothing  to  be  set,  must/ 
surely  be  accepted.    And  1  will  begin  first  with  Error. 

Error  is  without  any  question  a  dangerous  sub- 
ject, and  the  chief  difficulty  is  as  follows.  We 
cannot,  on  the  one  hand,  accept  anything  between 
non-existence  and  reality,  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
error  obstinately  refuses  to  be  either.  It  persistently 
I  attempts  to  maintain  a  third  position,  which  appears 
nowhere  to  e.xist,  and  yet  somehow  is  occupied.  In 
false  appearance  there  is  something  attributed  to 
the  real  which  does  not  belong  to  it.  But  if  the 
appearance  is  not  real,  then  it  is  not  false  appear- 
ance, because  it  is  nothing.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
it  is  false,  it  must  therefore  be  true  reality,  for  it  i& 
something  which  is.  And  this  dilemma  at  first 
■  sight  seems  insoluble.  Or,  to  put  it  otherwise,  an 
appearance,  which  is,  must  fall  somewhere.  But 
error,  because  it  is  false,  cannot  belong  to  the 
Absolute  ;  and,  again,  it  cannot  appertain  to  the 
finite  subject,  because  that,  with  all  its  contentSr 
cannot  fall  outside  the  Absolute  ;  at  least,  if  it  did, 
it  would  be  nothing.  And  so  error  has  no  home, 
it  has  no  place  in  existence  ;  and  yet,  for  all  that,  it 
exists.  And  for  this  reason  it  has  occasioned  much 
doubt  and  difficulty. 

For  Psychology  and  for  Logic  the  problem  is 
much  easier.  Error  can  be  identified  with  wrong 
inference,  and  can  be  compared  on  one  side  with  a 
typical  model  ;  while,  on  the  other  side,  we  can 
show  by  what  steps  it  originates.  But  these  en- 
quiries, however  interesting,  would  not  much  assist 
us,  and  we  must  endeavour  here  to  face  the  problem 


ERROR. 


187 


more  directly.      We  must  take  our   stand  on    the 
distinction  between  idea  and  reality. 

Error  is  the  same  as  false  appearance,'  or  (if  the 
reader  objects  to  this)  it  is  at  any  rate  one  kind  of 
false  appearance.  Now  appearance  is  content  not 
at  one  with  its  existence,  a  "  what "  loosened  from 
its  "  that."  And  in  this  sense  we  have  seen  that 
every  truth  is  appearance,  since  in  it  we  have 
divorce  of  quality  from  being  (p.  163).  The  idea, 
which  is  true,  is  the  adjective  of  reality  so  far  as  its 
content  goes.  It,  so  far,  is  restored,  and  belongs, 
to  existence.  But  an  idea  has  also  another  side, 
its  own  private  being  as  something  which  is  and 
happens.  And  an  idea,  as  content,  is  alienated 
from  this  its  own  existence  as  an  event.  Even 
where  you  take  a  presented  whole,  and  predicate 
one  or  more  features,  our  account  still  holds  good. 
For  the  content  predicated  has  now  become  alien 
to  its  existence.  On  the  one  side  it  has  not  been 
left  in  simple  unity  with  the  whole,  nor  again,  as 
predicated,  is  it  a  feature,  so  far.  that  is,  as  made  inta 
another  and  separate  fact.  In  "sugar  is  sweet" 
the  sweetness  asserted  of  the  sugar  is  not  the 
sweetness  so  far  as  divided  from  it  and  turned  into 
a  second  thing  in  our  minds.  This  thing  has  its 
own  being  there,  and  to  predicate  it,  as  such,  of  the 
sugar  would  clearly  be  absurd.  In  respect  of  its 
own  existence  the  idea  is  therefore  always  a  mere 
appearance.  And  this  character  of  divorce  fron> 
its  private  reality  becomes  usually  still  more  patent, 
where  the  idea  is  not  taken  from  presentation  but 
supplied  by  reproduction.  Wherever  the  predicate 
is  seen  to  be  supplied  from  an  image,  the  existence 
of  that  image  can  be  seen  at  once  not  to  be  the 
predicate.  It  is  something  clearly  left  outside  of 
the  judgment  and  quite  disregarded.* 

Appearance  then  will   be  the  looseness  of  char- 

'  See  more,  Chapter  xxvi. 
*  Compare  p.  164. 


i88 


REALITY. 


acter  from  being,  the  distinction  of  immediate  oneness 
into  two  sides,  a  "that"  and  a  "what."  And  this 
looseness  tends  further  to  harden  into  fracture  and 
into  the  separation  of  two  sundered  existences. 
Appearance  will  be  truth  when  a  content,  made 
alien  to  its  own  being,  is  related  to  some  fact  which 
accepts  its  qualification.  The  true  idea  is  appear- 
ance in  respect  of  its  own  being  as  fact  and  event, 
liut  is  reality  in  connection  with  other  being  which 
it  qualifies.  Error,  on  the  other  hand,  is  content 
made  loose  from  its  own  reality,  and  related  to  a 
reality  with  which  it  is  discrepant.  It  is  the  re- 
jection of  an  idea  by  existence  which  is  not  the 
existence  of  the  idea  as  made  loose.  It  is  the 
repulse  by  a  substantive  of  a  liberated  adjective.' 
Thus  it  is  an  appearance  which  not  only  appears, 
but  is  false.  It  is  in  other  words  the  collision  of  a 
mere  idea  with  reality. 

There  are  serious  problems  with  regard  both  to 
■error  and  truth,  and  the  distinction  between  them, 
which  challenge  our  scrutiny.  I  think  it  better 
however  to  defer  these  to  later  chapters.  I  will 
therefore  limit  here  the  enquiry,  so  far  as  is  possible, 
and  will  consider  two  main  questions.  Error  is 
content  neither  at  one  with  its  own  being,  nor 
otherwise  allowed  to  be  an  adjective  of  the  real. 
If  so,  we  must  ask  (i)  why  it  cannot  be  accepted 
by  reality,  and  (2)  how  it  still  actually  can  belong 
to  reality  ;  for  we  have  seen  that  this  last  conclusion 
is  necessary. 

I.  Error  is  rejected  by  reality  because  that  is 
harmonious,  and  is  taken  necessarily  to  be  so,  while 
error,  on  the  other  hand,  is  self-contradictory.  I  do 
not  mean  that  it  is  a  content  merely  not  at  one  (if 
that  were  possible)  with  its  own  mere  being.*     I 

'  Whether  the  adjective  has  been  liberated  from  this  substan- 
tive or  from  another  makes  no  difference. 

*  In  the  end  no  finite  predicate  or  subject  can  possibly  We 
harmonious. 


ERROR. 


189 


mean  that  its  inner  character,  as  ideal,  is  itself  dis- 
cordant and  self-discrepant.  But  I  should  prefer 
not  to  call  error  a  predicate  which  contradicts  itself. 
For  that  might  be  taken  as  a  statement  that  the 
contradiction  already  is  present  in  the  mere  pre- 
dicate, before  judgment  is  attempted  ;  and  this,  if 
defensible,  would  be  misleading.  Error  is  the 
qualification  of  a  reality  in  such  a  way  that  in 
the  result  it  has  an  inconsistent  content,  which  for 
that  reason  is  rejected.  Where  existence  has  a 
"what"  colliding  within  itself,  there  the  predication 
of  this  "what"  is  an  erroneous  judgment.  If  a 
reality  is  self-consistent,  and  its  further  determina- 
tion has  introduced  discord,  there  the  addition  is 
the  mistake,  and  the  reality  is  unaffected.  It  is 
unaffected,  however,  solely  on  the  assumption  that 
its  own  nature  in  no  way  suggested  and  called  in  the 
discordant.  For  otherwise  the  whole  result  is  in- 
fected with  falseness,  and  the  reality  could  never 
have  been  pure  from  discrepancy.' 

It  will  perhaps  tend  to  make  clearer  this  general 
view  of  error  if  I  defend  it  against  some  possible 
objections.  Error  is  supposed  by  some  persons  to 
be  a  departure  from  e.xperience,  or  from  what  is 
given  merely.  It  is  again  taken  sometimes  as  the 
confusion  of  internal  image  with  outward  sensation. 
But  any  such  views  are  of  course  most  superficial. 
Quite  apart  from  the  difficulty  of  finding  anything 
merely  given,  and  the  impossibility  of  always  using 
actual  present  sensation  as  a  test  of  truth — without 
noticing  the  strange  prejudice  that  outward  sensa- 
tions are  never  false,  and  the  dull  blindness  which 
fails  to  realize  that  the  "  inward  "  is  a  fact  just  as 
solid  as  the  "outward  " — we  may  dismiss  the  whole 
objection.  For,  if  the  given  has  a  content  which  is 
not  harmonious,  then,  no  matter  in  what  sense  we 


*  The  doctrine  here  is  stated  subject  to  correction  in  Chapter 
xxiv.     No  finite  predicate  or  subject  can  really  be  self-consistent. 


igo 


REALITY. 


like  to  take  "given,"  that  content  is  not  real.  And 
any  attempt,  either  to  deny  this,  or  to  maintain  that 
in  the  given  there  is  never  discrepancy,  may  be 
left  to  itself.  But  I  will  go  on  to  consider  the 
same  view  as  it  wears  a  more  plausible  form.  "  We 
do  not,"  I  may  be  told,  "add  or  take  away  predic- 
ates simply  at  our  pleasure.  We  do  not,  so  long 
as  this  arbitrary  result  does  not  visibly  contradict 
itself,  consider  it  true."  And  I  have  not  said  that 
we  should  do  this. 

Outside  known  truth  and  error  we  may,  of  course, 
have  simple  ignorance.'  An  assertion,  that  is,  must 
in  every  case  be  right  or  be  wrong  ;  but,  for  us  and 
for  the  present,  it  may  not  yet  be  either.  Still,  on 
the  other  hand,  we  do  know  that,  if  the  statement 
is  an  error,  it  will  be  so  because  its  content  collides 
internally.  "  But,  no,"  I  may  hear  the  reply,  "  this 
is  really  not  the  case.  Take  the  statement  that  at 
a  certain  time  an  event  did  or  did  not  happen. 
This  would  be  erroneous  because  of  disagreement 
with  fact,  and  not  always  because  it  is  inconsistent 
with  itself."  Still  I  must  insist  that  we  have  some 
further  reason  for  condemning  this  want  of  corre- 
spondence with  fact.  For  why,  apart  from  such  a 
reason,  should  either  we  or  the  fact  make  an  ob- 
jection to  this  defect  ?  Suppose  that  when  William 
has  been  hung,  I  assert  that  it  was  John.  My 
assertion  will  then  be  false,  because  the  reality  does 
not  admit  of  both  events,  and  because  William  is 
certain.  And  if  so,  then  after  all  my  error  surely 
will  consist  in  giving  to  the  real  a  self-discrepant 
content.  For  otherwise,  when  John  is  suggested, 
I  could  not  reject  the  idea.  I  could  only  say  that 
certainly  it  was  William,  and  might  also,  for  all  that 
I  knew,  be  John  too.  But  in  our  actual  practice  we 
proceed  thus  :  since  "  both  John  atui  William " 
forms   a   discordant   content,   that   statement    is  in 


'  For  further  explanation,  see  Chapter  xxvii. 


ERROR. 


191 


-error — here  to  the  extent  of  John.'  In  the  same 
way,  if  where  no  man  is  you  insist  on  John's 
presence,  then,  without  discussing  here  the  nature 
of  the  privative  judgment,*  we  can  understand  tlie 
mistake.  You  are  trying  to  force  on  the  reality 
something  which  would  make  it  inconsistent,  and 
which  therefore  is  erroneous.  But  it  would  be  alike 
easy  and  idle  to  pursue  the  subject  further  ;  and  I 
must  trust  that,  to  the  reader  who  reflects,  our 
main  conclusion  is  already  made  good.  Error  is 
qualification  by  the  self-discrepant.  We  must  not, 
if  we  take  the  predicate  in  its  usual  sense,  in  all 
cases  place  the  contradiction  within  that.  But  where 
■discrepancy  is  found  in  the  result  of  qualification,  it 
is  there  that  we  have  error.  And  I  will  now  pass 
to  the  second  main  problem  of  this  chapter. 

2.  The  question  is  about  the  relation  of  error 
to  the  Absolute.  HojAr_is^  it  possible  for  false  ^' 
appearance  to  take  its  place^wlttiTn  reality  ?  We 
have  to  some  extent  perceived  in  what  error  consists, 
but  we  still  are  confronted  by  our  original  problem. 
Qualification  by  the  self- discrepant  exists  as  a  fact, 
and  yet  how  can  it  be  real  ?  The  self-contradiction 
in  the  content  both  belongs,  and  is  unable  to 
belong,  to  reality.  The  elements  related,  and  their 
synthesis,  and  their  reference  to  existence — these 
are  things  not  to  be  got  rid  of  You  may  condemn 
them,  but  your  condemnation  cannot  act  as  a  spell 
to  abolish  them  wholly.  If  they  were  not  there, 
you  could  not  judge  them,  and  then  you  judge  them 
not  to  be;  or  you  pronounce  them  apparently  some- 
how to  exist  without  really  existing.  What  is  the 
exit  from  this  puzzle  ? 

There  is  no  way  but  in  accepting  the  whole  mass 
of  fact,  and  in  then  attempting  to   correct  it  and 

'  I  do  not  here  touch  the  question  why  John  is  sacrificed 
rather  than  William  (or  both).     On  this,  see  Chapter  xxiv. 
'  See  Chapter  xxvii. 


192 


REALITY, 


make 


it  good.  Error  is  truth,  it  is  partial  truth,  t 
that  is  false  only  because  partial  and  left  incomplete.  I 
The  Absolute  has  without  subtraction  all  those 
qualities,  and  it  has  every  arrangement  which  we 
seem  to  confer  upon  it  by  our  mere  mistake.  The 
only  mistake  lies  in  our  failure  to  give  also  the 
complement.  The  reality  owns  the  discordance  and 
the  discrepancy  of  false  appearance ;  but  it  pos- 
sesses also  much  else  in  which  this  jarring  character 
is  swallowed  up  and  is  dissolved  in  fuller  harmony. 
I  do  not  mean  that  by  a  mere  re-arrangement  of 
the  matter  which  is  given  to  us,  we  could  remove 
its  contradictions.  For.  being  limited,  we  cannot 
apprehend  all  the  details  of  the  whole.  And  we 
must  remember  that  every  old  arrangement,  con- 
demned as  erroneous,  itself  forms  part  of  that 
detail.     To  know  all  the  elements  of  the  universe, 

\  with  all  the  conjunctions  of  those  elements,  good 
and  bad,  is  impossible  for  finite  minds.  And  hence 
obviously  we  are  unable  throughout  to  reconstruct 
our  discrepancies.  But  we  can  comprehend  in 
general  what  we  cannot  see  exhibited  in  detail. 
We  cannot  understand  how  in  the  Absolute  a  rich 
harmony  embraces  every  special  discord.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  we  may  be  sure  that  this  result  is 
reached  ;  and  we  can  even  gain  an  imperfect  view 
of  the  effective  principle.  I  will  try  to  explain  this 
latter  statement. 

There  is  only  one  way  to  get  rid  of  contradiction, 

land  that  way  is  by  dissolution.  Instead  of  one  subject 
distracted,  we  get  a  larger  subject  with  distinctions, 
and  so  the  tension  is  removed.  We  have  at  first 
A,  which  possesses  the  qualities  c  and  b,  incon- 
sistent adjectives  which  collide ;  and  we  go  on  to 
produce  harmony  by  making  a  distinction  within 
this  subject.  That  was  really  not  mere  A,  but 
either  a  complex  within  A,  or  (rather  here)  a  wider 
whole  in  which  A  is  included,  The  real  subject 
is   A  -f-  D  ;  and  this  subject  contains  the  contradic- 


ERROR. 


'93 


tion  made  harmless  by  division,  since  A  is  f  and  D 
is  b.  This  is  the  general  principle,  and  I  will 
attempt  here  to  apply  it  in  particular.  Let  us 
suppose  the  reality  to\i^Y^  (a  b  c  d  e  f  g  .  .  .  ), 
and  that  we  are  able  only  to  get  partial  views  of 
this  reality.  Let  us  first  take  such  a  view  as 
"  X  {a  b)  is  A."  This  (rightly  or  wrongly)  we  should 
probably  call  a  true  view.  For  the  content  b  does 
plainly  belong  to  the  subject  ;  and,  further,  the 
appearance  also — in  other  words,  the  separation  of 
b  in  the  predicate — can  partly  be  explained.  For, 
answering  to  this  separation,  we  postulate  now 
another  adjective  in  the  subject;  let  us  call  it  jS. 
The  "  thatness,"  the  psychical  existence  of  the  pre- 
dicate, which  at  first  was  neglected,  has  now  also 
itself  been  included  in  the  subject.  We  may  hence 
write  the  subject  as  X  {a  b  13)  ;  and  in  this  way  we 
seem  to  avoid  contradiction.  Let  us  go  further  on 
the  same  line,  and,  having  dealt  with  a  truth,  pass 
next  to  an  error.  Take  the  subject  once  more  as 
\  (a  b  c  d  e  .  .  .  ),  and  let  us  now  say  "  X  {a  b) 
is  d."  This  is  false,  because  d  is  not  present  in  the 
subject,  and  so  we  have  a  collision.  But  the  collision 
is  resolved  if  we  take  the  subject,  not  as  mere  X 
{a  b),  but  more  widely  as  K  {a  b  c  d).  In  this  case 
the  predicate  rt^  becomes  applicable.  Thus  the  error 
consisted  in  the  reference  of  d  to  a  b  ;  3.s  it  might 
have  consisted  in  like  manner  in  the  reference  of 
a  b  to  c,  or  again  of  c  to  d.  All  of  these  exist  in 
the  subject,  and  the  reality  possesses  with  each  both 
its  "  what  "  and  its  "  that."  But  not  content  with  a 
provisional  separation  of  these  indissoluble  aspects, 
not  satisfied  (as  in  true  appearance)  to  have  aa,  b^, 
and  d^ — forms  which  may  typify  distinctions  that 
bring  no  discord  into  the  qualities — we  have  gone 
on  further  into  error.  We  have  not  only  loosened 
"what"  from  "that,"  and  so  have  made  appear- 
ance ;  but  we  have  in  each  case  then  bestowed  the 
"  what  "  on  a  wrong  quality  within  the  real  subject. 
A.  R.  o 


194 


REALITY. 


We  have  crossed  the  threads  of  the  connection 
between  our  "  whats  "  and  our  "  thats,"  and  have 
thus  caused  collision,  a  collision  which  disappears 
when  things  are  taken  as  a  whole. 

I  confess  that  I  shrink  from  using  metaphors, 
since  they  never  can  suit  wholly.  The  writer 
tenders  them  unsuspiciously  as  a  possible  help  in  a 
common  difficulty.  And  so  he  subjects  himself, 
perhaps,  to  the  captious  ill-will  or  sheer  negligence 
of  his  reader.  Still  to  those  who  will  take  it  for  what 
it  is,  I  will  offer  a  fiction.  Suppose  a  collection  of 
beings  whose  souls  in  the  night  walk  about  without 
their  bodies,  and  so  make  new  relations.  On  their 
return  in  the  morning  we  may  imagine  that  the  pos- 
sessors feel  the  benefit  of  this  divorce  ;  and  we  may 
therefore  call  it  truth.  But,  if  the  wrong  soul  with 
its  experience  came  back  to  the  wrong  body,  that 
might  typify  error.  On  the  other  hand,  perhaps  the 
ruler  of  this  collection  of  beings  may  perceive  very 
well  the  nature  of  the  collision.  And  it  may  even 
be  that  he  provokes  it.  For  how  instructive  and 
how  amusing  to  observe  in  each  case  the  conflict  of 
sensation  with  imported  and  foreign  experience. 
Perhaps  no  truth  after  all  could  be  half  so  rich  and 
half  so  true  as  the  result  of  this  wild  discord — to  one 
who  sees  from  the  centre.  And,  if  so,  error  will 
come  merely  from  isolation  and  defect,  from  the 
limitation  of  each  being  to  the  "  this  "  and  the 
"  mine." 


But  our  account,  it  will  fairly  be  objected,  is 
untenable  because  incomplete.  For  error  is  tio/\ 
merely  negative.  The  content,  isolated  and  so ' 
discordant,  is  after  all  held  together  in  a  positive 
discord.  And  so  the  elements  may  exist,  and  their 
relations  to  their  subjects  may  all  be  there  in  the 
Absolute,  together  with  the  complements  which 
make  them  all  true,  and  yet  the  problem  is  not 
solved.     For  the  point  of  error,  when  all  is  said,  lies 


ERROK. 


in  this  ver)'^  insistence  on  the  partial  and  discrepant, 
and   this  discordant  emphasis    will   fall    outside  of 


A 


t' 


every  possible  rearrangement.      I  admit  this  objec--^ 
ti'on.  and   I  endorse  it.     The  problem  of  error  can-  '^^^-V 
not  be  solved  by  an  enlarged  scheme  of  relations.^^"    <  ] 
Each  misarrangement  cannot  be  taken  up   wholly         ^ 
as  an  element  in  the  compensations  of  a  harmonious ~\.:^ 
mechanism.       For  there  is  a  positive  sense  and    a    ^    C, 
specific  character  which  marks  each  appearance,  and^TS     ',  _J? 
this   will   still  fall   outside.       Hence,   while  all  thatjT^ 
appears  somehow  is,  all  has  not  been  accounted  for/ 
by  any  rearrangement. 

But  on  the  other  side  the  Absolute  is  not,  and  can 
not  be  thought  as,  any  scheme  of  relations.      If  we 
keep  to  these,  there  is  no  harmonious  unity  in  the  i 
whole.     The  Absolute  is  beyond  a  mere  arrange- ' 
ment,     however     well    compensated,     though     an 
arrangement  is  assuredly  one  aspect  of  its  being.x  ' 

I  Reality,  consists,  as  we  saw,  in  a  higher  experience,! 
superior  to  the  distinctions  which  it  includes  and 
overrides.  And.  with  this,  the  last  objection  to  the 
transformation  of  error  has  lost  its  basis.  The  one- 
sided emphasis  of  error,  its  isolation  as  positive  and 
as  not  dissoluble  in  a  wider  connection — this  agpin 
will  contribute,  we  know  not  how,  to  the  harmony 
of  the  Absolute.  It  will  be  another  detail,  which, 
together  with  every  "  what  "  and  "  that  "  and  their 
relations,  will  be  absorbed  into  the  whole  and  will 
subserve  its  perfection. 

On  this  view  there  still  are  problems  as  to  error 
and  truth  which  we  must  deal  with  hereafter.  But 
the  main  dilemma  as  to  false  appearance  has,  I 
think,  been  solved.  That  both  exists  and  is,  as 
such,  not  real.  Its  arrangement  becomes  true  in  a 
wider  rearrangement  of  *'  what "  and  of  "  that." 
Error  is  truth  when  it  is  supplemented.  And  its 
positive  isolation  also  is  reducible,  and  exists  as  a 
mere  element  within  the  whole.  Error  is,  but  is  not 
barely  what  it  takes  itself  to  be.      And   its  mere 


196 


REALITY. 


onesidedness  again  is  but  a  partial  emphasis,  a  note 
of  insistence  which  contributes,  we  know  not  how, 
to  greater  energy  of  life.  And,  if  so,  the  whole 
problem  has,  so  far.  been  disposed  of. 

Now  that  this  solution  cannot  be  verified,  in  the 
sense  of  being  made  out  in  detail,  is  not  an  ad- 
mission on  my  part  It  is  rather  a  doctrine  which 
1  assert  and  desire  to  insist  on.  It  is  impossible  for 
us  to  show,  in  the  case  of  every  error,  how  in  the 
whole  it  is  made  good.  It  is  impossible,  even 
apart  from  detail,  to  realize  how  the  relational  form 
is  in  general  absorbed.  But,  upon  the  other  hand. 
I  deny  that  our  solution  is  either  unintelligible  or 
impossible.  And  possibility  here  is  all  that  wei 
want.  For  we  have  seen  that  the  Absolute  must  be\ 
a  harmonious  system.  We  have  first  perceived! 
this  in  general,  and  here  specially,  in  the  case  of 
error,  we  have  been  engaged  in  a  reply  to  an  alleged 
negative  instance.  Our  opponent's  case  has  been 
this,  that  the  nature  of  error  makes  our  harmony 
impossible.  And  we  have  shown,  on  the  other 
side,  that  he  possesses  no  such  knowledge.  We 
have  pointed  out  that  it  is  at  least  possible  for 
errors  to  correct  themselves,  and,  as  such,  to  dis- 
appear in  a  higher  experience.  But,  if  so,  we  ?nust 
affirm  that  they  are  thus  absorbed  and  made  good. 
For  what  impossible,  and  what  a  general  principle 
compels  us  to  say  must  be.  that  certainly  is. 


CHAPTER    XVII. 


EVIL. 


We  have  seen  that  error  is  compatible  with  absolute 
perfection,  and  we  now  must  try  to  reach  the  same  i 
result  in  the  case  of  evil.  Evil  is  a  problem  which 
of  course  presents  serious  difficulties,  but  the  worst 
have  been  imported  into  it  and  rest  on  pure  mistake. 
It  is  here,  as  it  is  also  with  what  is  called  "  Free 
Will."  The  trouble  has  come  from  the  idea  that 
the  Absolute  is  a  moral  person.  If  you  start  from 
that  basis,  then  the  relation  of  evil  to  the  Absolute 
presents  at  once  an  irreducible  dilemma.  The 
problem  then  becomes  insoluble,  but  not  because 
it  is  obscure  or  in  any  way  mysterious.  To  any 
one  who  has  sense  and  courage  to  see  things  as 
they  are,  and  is  resolved  not  to  mystify  others  or 
himself,  there  is  really  no  question  to  discuss.  The 
dilemma  is  plainly  insoluble  because  it  is  based  on  a 
clear  self-contradiction,  and  the  discussion  of  it  here 
would  be  quite  uninstructive.  It  would  concern  us 
only  if  we  had  reason  to  suppose  that  the  Absolute 
is  (properly)  moral.  But  we  have  no  such  reason, 
and  hereafter  we  may  hope  to  convince  ourselves 
(Chapter  xxv.).  that  morality  cannot  (as  such)  be 
ascribed  to  the  Absolute.  And,  with  this,  the 
problem  becomes  certainly  no  worse  than  many 
others.  Hence  I  would  invite  the  reader  to  dis- 
miss all  hesitation  and  misgiving.  If  the  questions 
we  ask  prove  unanswerable,  that  will  certainly  not 
be  because  they  are  quite  obscure  or  unintelligible. 
It  will  be  simply  because  the  data  we  possess  are 


198 


KEAHTY. 


insufficient.     But  let  us  at  all  events  try  to  under- 
stand what  it  is  that  we  seek. 


Evil  has,  we  all  know,  several  meanings.  It  may 
be  taken  (I.)  as  pain,  (II.)  as  failure  to  realize  end, 
and  (HI.),  specially,  as  immorality.  The  fuller 
consideration  of  the  last  point  must  be  postponed  to 
a  later  chapter,  where  we  can  deal  better  with  the 
relation  of  the  finite  person  to  the  Absolute. 

I.  No  one  of  course  can  deny  that  pain  actually 
exists,  and  I  at  least  should  not  dream  of  denying 
that  it  is  evil.  But  we  failed  to  see,  on  the  other 
hand,  how  pain,  as  such,  can  possibly  exist  in  the 
Absolute.'  Hence,  it  being  admitted  that  pain  has 
actual  existence,  the  question  is  whether  its  nature 
can  be  transmuted.  Can  its  painfulness  disappear 
in  a  higher  unity  ?  If  so,  it  will  e.\ist,  but  will  have 
ceased  to  be  pain  when  considered  on  the  whole. 

We  can  to  some  extent  verify  in  our  actual  ex- 
perience the  neutralization  of  pain.  It  is  quite 
certain  that  small  pains  are  often  wholly  swallowed 
up  in  a  larger  composite  pleasure.  And  the  asser- 
tion that,  in  all  these  cases,  they  have  been  destroyed 
and  not  merged,  would  most  certainly  be  baseless. 
To  suppose  that  my  condition  is  never  pleasant  on 
the  whole  while  I  still  have  an  actual  local  pain,  is 
directly  opposed  to  fact.  In  a  composite  state  the 
pain  doubtless  will  detract  from  the  pleasure,  but 
still  we  may  have  a  resultant  which  is  pleasurable 
wholly.  Such  a  balance  is  all  that  we  want  in  the 
case  of  absolute  perfection. 

We  shall  certainly  so  far  have  done  nothing  to 
confute  the  pessimist.  "  I  accept,"  he  will  reply, 
"  your  conclusion  in  general  as  to  the  existence  of  a 
balance.      I    quite  agree  that  in   the  resultant  one 

'  Chapter  xiv.  This  conclusion  is  somewhat  modified  in 
Chapter  xxvii.,  but,  for  the  sake  of  clearness,  I  state  it  here 
unconditionally.  The  reader  can  correct  afterwards,  so  far  as  is 
required,  the  results  of  the  present  chapter. 


EVIL. 


199 


feature  is  submerged.  But,  unfortunately  for  your 
view,  that  feature  really  is  not  pain  but  pleasure 
The  universe,  taken  as  a  whole,  suffers  therefore 
sheer  pain  and  is  hence  utterly  evil."  But  1  do  not 
propose  to  undertake  here  an  examination  of  pes- 
simism. That  would  consist  largely  in  the  weighing 
of  psychological  arguments  on  either  side,  and  the 
result  of  these  is  in  my  opinion  fatal  to  pessimism. 
In  the  world,  which  we  observe,  an  impartial- 
scrutiny  will  discover  more  pleasure  than  pain,  ' 
though  it  is  difficult  to  estimate,  and  easy  to  exag- 
gerate, the  amount  of  the  balance.  Still  I  must 
confess  that,  apart  from  this,  I  should  hold  to  my 
conclusion.  I  should  still  believe  that  in  the 
universe  there  is  preponderance  of  pleasure.  The 
presumption  in  its  favour  is  based  on  a  principle 
from  which  I  see  no  escape  (Chapter  xiv.),  while 
the  world  we  see  is  probably  a  very  small  part  of 
the  reality.  Our  general  principle  must  therefore 
be  allowed  to  weigh  down  a  great  deal  of  particular 
appearance  ;  and,  if  it  were  necessary,  I  would  with- 
out scruple  rest  my  case  on  this  argument  But,  on 
the  contrary,  no  such  necessity  exists.  The  ob- 
served facts  are  clearly,  on  the  whole,  in  favour  of 
some  balance  of  pleasure.  They,  in  the  main,  serve 
to  support  our  conclusion  from  principle,  and  pess- 
imism may,  without  hesitation,  be  dismissed. 

We  have  found,  so  far,  that  there  is  a  possibility 
of  pain  ceasing,  as  such,  to  exist  in  the  Absolute. 
We  have  .shown  that  this  possibility  can  to  some 
extent  be  verified  in  experience.  And  we  have  a 
general  presumption  in  favour  of  an  actual  balance 
of  pleasure.  Hence  once  more  here,  as  before  with 
error,  possibility  is  enough.  For  what  may  be,  if  it" 
also  must  be,  assuredly  is. 

There  are  readers,  perhaps,  who  will  desire  to  go 
farther.  It  might  be  urged  that  in  the  Absolute 
pain  not  merely  is  lost,  but  actually  serves  as  a  kind 
of  stimulus  to  heighten  the  pleasure.     And  doubt- 


200 


REALITY. 


less  this  possibly  may  be  the  case  ;  but  I  can  see  no 
good  reason  for  taking  it  as  fact.  In  the  Absolute 
there  probably  is  no  pleasure  outside  of  finite  souls 
(Chapter  xxvii.)  ;  and  we  have  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  those  we  do  not  see  are  happier  than  those 
which  we  know.  Hence,  though  this  is  possible, 
we  are  not  justified  in  asserting  it  as  more.  For 
we  have  no  right  to  go  farther  than  our  principle 
requires.  But,  if  there  is  a  balance  of  clear  pleasure, 
that  principle  is  satisfied,  for  nothing  then  stands  in 
the  way  of  the  Absolute's  perfection.  It  is  a  mistake 
to  think  that  perfection  is  made  more  perfect  by 
increase  of  quantity  (Chapter  xx.). 

II.  Let  us  go  on  to  consider  evil  as  waste,  fail- 
ure, and  confusion.  The  whole  world  seems  to  a 
large  extent  the  sport  of  mere  accident.  Nature 
and  our  life  show  a  struggle  in  which  one  end  per- 
haps is  realized,  and  a  hundred  are  frustrated. 
This  is  an  old  complaint,  but  it  meets  an  answer  in 
an  opposing  doubt.  Is  there  really  any  such  thing 
as  an  end  in  Nature  at  all .''  For,  if  not,  clearly  there 
is  no  evil,  in  the  sense  in  which  at  present  we  are 
taking  the  word.  But  we  must  postpone  the  discus- 
sion of  this  doubt  until  we  have  gained  some  under- 
standing of  what  Nature  is  to  mean.'  I  will  for  the 
present  admit  the  point  of  view  which  first  supposes"^ 
ends  in  Nature,  and  then  objects  that  they  are  fail- 
ures. And  I  think  that  this  objection  is  not  hard 
to  dispose  of.  The  ends  which  fail,  we  may  reply,  ,-'' 
are  ends  selected  by  ourselves  and  selected  more 
or  less  erroneously.  They  are  too  partial,  as  wt 
have  taken  them,  and,  if  included  in  a  larger  end  to 
which  they  are  relative,  they  cease  to  be  failures. 
They,  in  short,  subserve  a  wider  scheme,  and  in 
that  they  are  realized.  It  is  here  with  evil  as  it 
was   before  with  error.      That  was  lost    in  higher 

'  For  the  question  of  ends  in   Nature  see  Chapters  x.xii.  and 
xxvi. 


EVIL. 


20 1 


truth  to  which  it  was  subordinate,  and  in  which,  as 
such,  it  vanished.  And  with  partial  ends,  in  Nature 
or  in  human  lives,  the  same  principle  will  hold.  Idea 
and  existence  we  find  not  to  agree,  and  this  dis- 
cord we  call  evil.  But,  when  these  two  sides  are 
enlarged  and  each  taken  more  widely,  both  may  well 
come  together.  I  do  not  mean,  of  course,  that  every 
finite  end,  as  such,  is  realized.  I  mean  that  it  is 
lost,  and  becomes  an  element,  in  a  wider  idea  which 
is  one  with  e.vistence.  And,  as  with  error,  even  our 
onesidedness,  our  insistence  and  our  disappointment, 
may  somehow  all  subserve  a  harmony  and  go  to 
perfect  it.  The  aspects  of  idea  and  of  existence 
may  be  united  in  one  great  whole,  in  which  evil, 
and  even  ends,  as  such,  disappear.  To  verify  this 
consummation,  or  even  to  see  how  in  detail  it  can 
be,  are  both  impossible.  But,  for  all  that,  such  per- 
fection in  its  general  idea  is  Intelligible  and  possible. 
And,  because  the  Absolute  is  perfect,  this  harmony 
must  also  exist.  For  that  which  is  both  possible  || 
and  necessary  we  are  bound  to  think  real. 

III.  Moral  evil  presents  us  with  further  difficul- 
ties. Here  it  is  not  a  question  simply  of  defect,  and 
of  the  failure  in  outward  existence  of  that  inner  idea 
which  we  take  as  the  end.  We  are  concerned  fur- 
ther with  a  positive  strife  and  opposition.  We  have 
an  idea  in  a  subject,  an  end  which  strives  to  gain 
reality  ;  and  on  the  other  side,  we  have  the  exist- 
ence of  the  same  subject.  This  existence  not  merely 
fails  to  correspond,  but  struggles  adversely,  and  the 
collision  is  felt  as  such.  In  our  moral  experience 
we  find  this  whole  fact  given  beyond  question.  We 
suffer  within  ourselves  a  contest  of  the  good  and 
bad  wills  and  a  certainty  of  evil.  Nay,  if  we  please, 
we  may  add  that  this  discord  is  necessary,  since 
without  it  morality  must  wholly  perish. 

And  this  necessity  of  discord  shows  the  road 
into  the  centre  of  our  problem.      Moral   evil   exists 


_.  202 


REALITY. 


1 


! 


only  in  moral  experience,  and  that  experience  in  its 
essence  is  full  of  inconsistency.  For  morality  I 
desires  unconsciously,  with  the  suppression  of  evil,  I 
to  become  wholly  non-moral.  It  certainly  would 
shrink  from  this  end,  but  it  thus  unknowingly 
desires  the  existence  and  perpetuity  of  evil.  I 
shall  have  to  return  later  to  this  subject  (Chapter 
XXV.),  and  for  the  present  we  need  keep  hold  merely 
of  this  one  point.  Morality  itself,  which  makes  evil, 
desires  in  evil  to  remove  a  condition  of  its  own 
being;.  It  labours  essentially  to  pass  into  a  super- 
moral  and  therefore  a  non-moral  sphere. 

But,  if  we  will  follow  it  and  will  frankly  adopt  this 
tendency,  we  may  dispose  of  our  difficulty.  For  the 
content,  willed  as  evil  and  in  opposition  to  the  good, 
can  enter  as  an  element  into  a  wider  arrangement. 
Evil,  as  we  say  (usually  without  meaning  it),  is  over- 
ruled and  subserves.  It  is  enlisted  and  it  plays  a 
part  in  a  higher  good  end,  and  in  this  sense,  un- 
knowingly is  good.  Whether  and  how  far  it  is  as 
good  as  the  will  which  is  moral,  is  a  question  later 
to  be  discussed.  All  that  we  need  understand  here 
is  that  "  Heaven's  design,"  if  we  may  speak  so,  can 
realize  itself  as  effectively  in  "  Catiline  or  Borgia" 
as  in  the  scrupulous  or  innocent.  For  the  higher 
end  is  super-moral,  and  our  moral  end  here  has  been 
confined,  and  is  therefore  incomplete.  As  before 
with  physical  evil,  the  discord  as  such  disappears, 
if  the  harmony  is  made  wide  enough. 

But  it  will  be  said  truly  that  in  moral  evil  we  have 
something  additional.  We  have  not  the  mere  fact 
of  incomplete  ends  and  their  isolation,  but  we  have 
in  addition  a  positive  felt  collision  in  the  self.  And 
this  cannot  be  explained  away,  for  it  has  to  fall 
within  the  Absolute,  and  it  makes  there  a  discord 
which  remains  unresolved.  But  our  old  principle 
may  still  serve  to  remove  this  objection.  The  col- 
lision and  the  strife  may  be  an  element  in  some 
fuller  realization.     Just  as  in   a  machine  the  resist- 


EVIL. 


203 


ance  and  pressure  of  the  parts  subserves  an  end 
beyond  any  of  them,  if  regarded  by  itself — so  at  a 
much  higher  level  it  may  be  with  the  Absolute. 
Not  only  the  collision  but  that  specific  feeling,  by 
which  it  is  accompanied  and  aggravated,  can  be 
taken  up  into  an  all-inclusive  perfection.  We  do 
not  know  how  this  is  done,  and  ingenious  metaphors 
(if  we  could  find  them)  would  not  serve  to  explain 
it.  For  the  explanation  vi^ould  tend  to  wear  the 
form  of  qualities  in  relation,  a  form  necessarily  (as 
we  have  seen)  transcended  in  the  Absolute.  Such 
a  perfect  way  of  existence  would,  however,  reconcile 
our  jarring  discords  ;  and  I  do  not  see  how  we  can 
deny  that  such  a  harmony  is  possible.  But,  if  pos- 
sible, then,  as  before,  it  is  indubitably  real.  For,  1 
on  the  one  side,  we  have  an  overpowering  reason 
for  maintaining  it ;  while  upon  the  other  side,  so 
far  as  I  can  see,  we  have  nothing. 


I  will  mention  in  passing  another  point,  the 
unique  sense  of  personality  which  is  felt  strongly  in 
evil.  But  I  must  defer  its  consideration  until  we 
attack  the  problem  of  the  "mine"  and  the  "this" 
(Chapter  xix.).  And  I  will  end  here  with  some 
words  on  another  source  of  danger.  There  is  a 
warning  which  I  may  be  allowed  to  impress  on  the 
reader.  We  have  used  several  times  already  with 
diverse  subject-matters  the  same  form  of  argument. 
All  differences,  we  have  urged  repeatedly,  come  to- 
gether in  the  Absolute.  In  this,  how  we  do  not 
know,  all  distinctions  are  fused,  and  all  relations 
disappear.  And  there  is  an  objection  which  may 
probably  at  some  point  have  seemed  plausible. 
"  Yes,"  I  may  be  told,  "  it  is  too  true  that  all  differ- 
ence is  gone.  First  with  one  real  existence,  and 
then  afterwards  with  another,  the  old  argument  is 
brought  out  and  the  old  formula  applied.  There  is 
no  variety  in  the  solution,  and  hence  in  each  case 
the  variety  is   lost  to  the  Absolute.     Along   with 


204 


REALITY. 


[ 


these  distinctions  all    character  has   wholly  disap- 
peared, and  the  Absolute  stands  outside,  an   empty 
residue  and   bare  Thing-in-itself."     This  would  be 
a  serious  misunderstanding.      It   is  true  that    we  do 
not  know  how  the  Absolute  overrides  the  relational 
form.      But  it  does  not  follow  from   this   that,  when 
the  relational  form  is  gone,  the  result  is  really  poorer. 
It   is  true  that  with  each  problem  we  cannot  say 
how  its  special   discords  are  harmonized.     But  is 
this  to  deny  the  reality  of  diverse  contents   in   the 
Absolute  ?     Because  in  detail  we  cannot  tell  in  what 
each  solution  consists,  are  we  therefore  driven  to- 
assert  that  all  the  detail    is  abolished,  and  that  our 
Absolute  is  a  Hat  monotony   of  emptiness  .''     This 
would  indeed  be  illogical.     For  though  we  do  not 
know  in  each  case  what  the  solution  can  be,  we  know 
that    in    every   case    it    contains  the  whole  of   the 
variety.     We  do  not   know  how  all  these    partial 
unities  come  together  in  the  Absolute,  but  we  may 
be  sure  that  the  content  of  not  one  is  obliterated. 
The  Absolute  is  the  richer  for  every  discord,  and 
for  all  diversity  which  it  embraces  ;  and  it  is  our 
ignorance  only  in  which  consists  the  poverty  of  our."\,  'j, 
object.     Our  knowledge  must  be  poor  because  it  is    i  J 
abstract.       We  cannot  specify  the  concrete   nature  "^vj 
of  the  Absolute's  riches,  but   with  every  region  of  -  «! 
phenomenal  existence  we  can  say  that  it  possesses 
so  much  more  treasure.     Objections  and   problems, 
one  after  the  other,  are  not  shelved  merely,  but  each 
is   laid  up  as  a  positive  increase  of  character  in  the 
reality.     Thus  a  man  might  be  ignorant  of  the  exact 
shape  in  which  his   goods  have  been  realized,  and 
yet  he  might  be   rationally  assured   that,  with  each 
fresh  alienation  of  visible  property,  he  has  somehow 
corresponding  wealth  in  a  superior  form. 


ri 


1 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 


TEMPORAL  AND  SPATIAL  APPEARANCE. 


Both  time  and  space  have  been  shown  to  be  un- 
real as  such.  We  found  in  both  such  contradictions 
that  to  predicate  either  of  the  reality  was  out  of 
the  question.  Time  and  space  are  mere  appear- 
ance, and  that  result  is  quite  certain.  Both,  on  the 
other  hand,  exist ;  and  both  must  somehow  in  some 
way  belong  to  our  Absolute.  Still  a  doubt  may  be 
raised  as  to  this  being  possible. 
To    explain    time    and    space, 


showing   how  such  appearances 


in  the  sense  of 
come  to  be,  and 
again  how  without  contradiction  they  can  be  real 
in  the  Absolute,  is  certainly  not  my  object.  Any- 
thing of  the  kind,  I  am  sure,  is  impossible.  And 
what  I  wish  to  insist  on  is  this,  that  such  knowledge 
is  not  necessary.  What  we  require  to  know  is  only 
that  these  appearances  are  not  incompatible  with 
our  Absolute.  They  have  been  urged  as  instances 
fatal  to  any  view  such  as  ours ;  and  this  objection, 
we  must  reply,  is  founded  on  mistake.  Space  and 
time  give  no  ground  for  the  assertion  that  our 
Absolute  is  not  possible.  And,  in  their  case  once 
more,  we  must  urge  the  old  argument.  Since  it  is 
possible  that  these  appearances  can  be  resolved  into 
a  harmony  which  both  contains  and  transcends 
them  ;  since  again  it  is  necessary,  on  our  main  prin- 
ciple, that  this  should  be  so — it  therefore  truly  is 
real.  But  let  us  examine  these  appearances  more 
closely,  and  consider  time  first. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  take  up  the  question  of  time's 


206 


REALITY. 


origin.  To  show  it  as  [produced  psycholojjically 
from  timeless  elements  is,  I  should  say,  not  possible. 
Its  perception  generally  may  supervene  at  some 
stage  of  our  development ;  and,  at  all  events  in  its 
complete  form,  that  perception  is  clearly  a  result. 
But,  if  we  take  the  sense  of  time  in  its  most  simple 
and  undeveloped  shape,  it  would  be  difficult  to  show 
that  it  was  not  there  from  the  first.  But  this  whole 
question,  however  answered,  has  little  importance 
for  Metaphysics.  We  might  perhaps  draw,  if  we 
could  assume  that  time  has  been  developed,  some 
presumption  in  favour  of  its  losing  itself  once  more 
in  a  product  which  is  higher.  But  it  is  hardly  worth 
while  to  consider  this  presumption  more  closely. 

Passing  from  this  point  I  will  reply  to  an  objec- 
tion from  fact.  If  time  is  not  unreal,  I  admit  that 
our  Absolute  is  a  delusion  ;  but,  on  the  other  side 
it  will  be  urged  that  time  cannot  be  mere  appear- 
ance. The  change  in  the  finite  subject,  we  are  told. 
is  a  matter  of  direct  experience  ;  it  is  a  fact,  and 
hence  it  cannot  be  explained  away.  And  so  much 
of  course  is  indubitable.  Change  is  a  fact,  and,  fur- 
ther, this  fact,  as  such,  is  not  reconcilable  with  the 
Absolute.  And,  if  we  could  not  in  any  way  per-l 
ceive  how  the  fact  can  be  unreal,  we  shoidd  be  placed. 
I  admit,  in  a  hopeless  dilemma.  For  we  should 
have  a  view  as  to  reality  which  we  could  not  give 
up,  and  should,  on  the  other  hand,  have  an  exist- 
ence in  contradiction  with  that  view.  But  our  real 
position  is  very  different  from  this.  For  time  has 
been  shown  to  contradict  itself,  and  so  to  be  appear- 
ance. With  this,  its  discord,  we  see  at  once,  may 
pass  as  an  element  into  a  wider  harmony.  And.j 
with  this,  the  appeal  to  fact  at  once  becomes  worth-1 
less. 

It  is  mere  superstition  to  suppose  that  an  appeal 
to  experience  can  prove  reality.  That  I  find  some- 
thing in  existence  in  the  world  or  in  my  self,  shows 
that  this  something  exists,  and  it  cannot  show  more. 


TKMPORAL   AND   SPATIAL   APPEARANCE. 


207 


Any  deliverance  of  consciousness — whether  original 
or  acquired — is  but  a  deliverance  of  consciousness. 
It  is  in  no  case  an  oracle  and  a  revelation  which  we 
have  to  accept.  It  is  a  fact,  like  other  facts,  to  be 
dealt  with  ;  and  there  is  no  presumption  anywhere 
that  any  fact  is  better  than  appearance.  The 
"given"  of  course  is  given;  it  must  be  recognised, 
and  it  cannot  be  ignored.  But  between  recognising 
a  datum  and  receiving  blindly  its  content  as  reality 
is  a  very  wide  interval.  We  may  put  it  thus  once  ■ 
for  all — there  is  nothing  given  which  is  sacred. 
Metaphysics  can  respect  no  element  of  experience 
except  on  compulsion.  It  can  reverence  nothing 
but  what  by  criticism  and  denial  the  more  unmis- 
takably asserts  itself. 

Time  is  so  far  from  enduring  the  test  of  criticism, 
that  at  a  touch  it  falls  apart  and  proclaims  itself 
illusory.  I  do  not  propose  to  repeat  the  detail  of 
its  self-contradiction ;  for  that  I  take  as  exhibited 
once  for  all  in  our  First  Book.  What  I  must  at- 
tempt here  first  is  to  show  how  by  its  inconsistency 
time  directs  us  beyond  itself  It  points  to  some- 
thing higher  in  which  it  is  included  and  transcended. 

I,  In  the  first  place  change,  as  we  saw  (Chapter  \^ 
v.),  must  be  relative  to  a  permanent.  Doubtless 
here  was  a  contradiction  which  we  found  was  not 
soluble.  But,  for  all  that,  the  fact  remains  that  change 
demands  some  permanence  within  which  succession 
happens.  I  do  not  say  that  this  demand  is  con- 
sistent, and,  on  the  contrary,  I  wish  to  emphasize 
the  point  that  it  is  not  so.  It  is  inconsistent,  and 
yet  it  is  none  the  less  essential.  And  I  urge  that 
therefore  change  desires  to  pass  beyond  simple 
change.  It  seeks  to  become  a  change  which  is 
somehow  consistent  with  permanence.  Thus,  in 
asserting  itself,  time  tries  to  commit  suicide  as 
itself,  to  transcend  its  own  character  and  to  be  taken 
up  in  what  is  higher. 


ao8 


REALITY. 


2.  And  we  may  draw  this  same  conclusion  from 
another  inconsistency.  The  relation  of  the  present 
to  the  future  and  to  the  past  shows  once  more 
time's  attempt  to  transcend  its  own  nature.  Any'' 
lapse,  that  for  any  purpose  you  taice  as  one  period, 
becomes  forthwith  a  present.  And  then  this  lapse 
is  treated  as  if  it  existed  all  at  once.  For  how 
otherwise  could  it  be  spoken  of  as  one  thing  at  all  .■' 
Unless  it  is,  I  do  not  see  how  we  have  a  right  to 
regard  it  as  possessing  a  character.  And  unless  it 
is  present,  I  am  quite  unable  to  understand  with 
what  meaning  we  can  assert  that  it  is.  And,  I 
think,  the  common  behaviour  of  science  might  have 
been  enough  by  itself  to  provoke  reflection  on  this 
head.  We  may  say  that  science,  recognising  on  the 
one  side,  on  the  other  side  quite  ignores  the  e.vist- 
ence  of  time.  For  it  habitually  treats  past  and 
future  as  one  thing  with  the  present  (Chapter  viii.). 
The  character  of  an  existence  is  determined  by 
what  it  has  been  and  by  what  it  is  (potentially) 
about  to  be.  But  if  these  attributes,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  not  present,  how  can  they  be  real  ?  Again 
in  establishing  a  Law,  itself  without  special  relation 
to  time,  science  treats  facts  from  various  dates  as  all 
possessing  the  same  value.  Yet  how,  if  we  seriously 
mean  to  take  time  as  real,  can  the  past  be  reality  ? 
It  would,  I  trust,  be  idle  to  expand  here  these  ob- 
vious considerations.  They  should  suffice  to  point 
out  that  for  science  reality  at  least  irtcs  to  be  time- 
less, and  that  succession,  as  such,  can  be  treated  as 
something  without  rights  and  as  mere  appearance. 

3.  This  same  tendency  becomes  visible  in  another 
application.  The  whole  movement  of  our  mind 
implies  disregard  of  time.  Not  only  does  intellect 
accept  what  is  true  once  for  true  always,  and  thus 
fearlessly  take  its  stand  on  the  Identity  of  Indiscern- 
ibles — not  only  is  this  so,  but  the  whole  mass  of 
what  is  called  "Association"  implies  the  same  prin- 
ciple.    For  such  a  connection  does  not  hold  except 


K 


7 


TEMPORAL   AND   SPATIAL   APPEARANCE. 


209 


between  universals.'  The  associated  elements  are 
divorced  from  their  temporal  context ;  they  are  set 
free  in  union,  and  ready  to  form  fresh  unions  without 
regard  for  time's  reality.  This  is  in  effect  to  de- 
grade time  to  the  level  of  appearance.  But  our 
entire  mental  life,  on  the  other  hand,  has  its  move- 
ment through  this  law.  Our  whole  being  practically 
implies  it,  and  to  suppose  that  we  can  rebel  would 
be  mere  self-deception.  Here  again  we  have  found 
the  irresistible  tendency  to  transcend  time.  We  are 
forced  once  more  to  see  in  it  the  false  appearance 
of  a  timeless  reality. 

It  will  be  objected  perhaps  that  in  this  manner 
we  do  not  get  rid  of  time.  In  those  eternal  con- 
nections which  rule  in  darkness  our  lowest  psychical 
nature,  or  are  used  consciously  by  science,  succes- 
sion may  remain.  A  law  is  not  always  a  law  of 
what  merely  coexists,  but  it  often  gives  the  relation 
of  antecedent  and  sequent.  The  remark  is  true, 
but  certainly  it  could  not  show  that  time  is  self- 
consistent.  And  it  is  the  inconsistency,  and  hence 
the  self-transcendence  of  time  which  here  we  are 
urging.  This  temporal  succession,  which  persists 
still  in  the  causal  relation,  does  but  secure  to  the 
end  the  old  discrepancy.  It  resists,  but  it  cannot 
remove,  time's  inherent  tendency  to  pass  beyond 
itself.  Time  is  an  appearance  which  contradicts 
itself,  and  endeavours  vainly  to  appear  as  an  attri- 
bute of  the  timeless. 

It  might  be  instructive  here  to  mention  other 
spheres,  where  we  more  visibly  treat  mere  existence 
in  time  as  appearance.  But  we  perhaps  have  al- 
ready said  enough  to  establish  our  conclusion ;  and 
our  result,  so  far,  will  be  this.  Time  is  not  real  as 
such,  and  it  proclaims  its  unreality  by  its  inconsistent 
attempt  to  be  an  adjective  of  the  timeless.  It  is  an 
appearance  which  belongs  to  a  higher  character  in 

'  On    these  points  see  my  PriiuipUs  of  Logic,  and,  below, 
Chapter  xxiii. 

A.  R.  P 


2IO 


REALITY. 


which  its  special  quality  is  merged.  Its  own  tem- 
poral nature  does  not  there  cease  wholly  to  exist 
but  is  thoroughly  transmuted.  It  is  counterbalanced 
and,  as  such,  lost  within  an  all-inclusive  harmony. 
The  Absolute  is  timeless,  but  it  possesses  time  as 
an  isolated  aspect,  an  aspect  which,  in  ceasing  to  be 
isolated,  loses  its  special  character.  It  is  there,  but 
blended  into  a  whole  which  we  cannot  realize. 
But  that  we  cannot  realize  it,  and  do  not  know  how 
in  particular  it  can  exist,  does  not  show  it  to  be 
impossible.  It  is  possible,  and,  as  before,  its  possi- 
bility is  enough.  For  that  which  can  be,  and  upon 
,  a  general  ground  must  be — that  surely  is  real. 

And  it  would  be  better  perhaps  if  I  left  the 
matter  so.  For,  if  I  proceed  and  do  my  best  to 
bring  home  to  our  minds  time's  unreality,  I  may 
expect  misunderstanding.  I  shall  be  charged  with 
attempting  to  explain,  or  to  explain  away,  the  nature 
of  our  fact;  and  no  notice  will  be  taken  of  my  pro- 
tests that  I  regard  such  an  attempt  as  illusory. 
For  (to  repeat  it)  we  can  know  neither  how  time 
comes  to  appear,  nor  in  what  particular  way  its 
appearance  is  transcended.  However,  for  myself 
and  for  the  reader  who  will  accept  them  as  what 
ihey  are,  I  will  add  .some  remarks.  There  are  con- 
siderations which  help  to  weaken  our  belief  in 
time's  solidity.  It  is  no  mass  which  stands  out 
and  declines  to  be  engulfed.  It  is  a  loose  image 
confusedly  thrown  together,  and  that,  as  we  gaze, 
falls  asunder, 

I.  The  first  point  which  will  engage  us  is  the 
unity  of  time.  We  have  no  reason,  in  my  opinion, 
to  regard  time  as  one  succession,  and  to  take  all 
phenomena  as  standing  in  one  temporal  connection. 
We  have  a  tendency,  of  course,  to  consider  all  times 
as  forming  parts  of  a  single  series.  Phenomena,  it 
seems  clear,   are  all   alike  events   which   happen ; ' 

1  On  this  point  see  Chapter  xxiiL 


TKMPORAL    AND    SPATIAL   APPEARANCE. 

and,  since  they  happen,  we  go  on  to  a  further  con 
elusion.  We  regard  them  as  members  in  one  tem- 
poral whole,  and  standing  therefore  throughout  to 
one  another  in  relations  of  "before"  and  "after" 
or  "together."  But  this  conclusion  has  no  warrant. 
For  there  is  no  valid  objection  to  the  existence  of 
any  number  of  independent  time-series.  In  these 
the  internal  events  would  be  interrelated  tempor- 
arily, but  each  series,  as  a  series  and  as  a  whole, 
would  have  no  temporal  connection  with  anything 
outside.  I  mean  that  in  the  universe  we  might 
have  a  set  of  diverse  phenomenal  successions.  The 
events  in  each  of  these  would,  of  course,  be  related 
in  time,  but  the  series  themselves  need  not  have 
temporal  relation  to  one  another.  The  events,  that 
is,  in  one  need  not  be  after,  or  before,  or  together 
with,  the  events  in  any  other.  In  the  Absolute  they 
would  not  have  a  temporal  unity  or  connection  ; 
and,  for  themselves,  they  would  not  possess  any 
relations  to  other  series, 

I  will  illustrate  my  meaning  from  our  own  human 
experience,  When  we  dream,  or  when  our  minds 
go  wandering  uncontrolled,  when  we  pursue  imag- 
inary histories,  or  exercise  our  thoughts  on  some 
mere  supposed  sequence — we  give  rise  to  a  problem. 
There  is  a  grave  question,  if  we  can  see  it.  For 
within  these  successions  the  events  have  temporal 
connection,  and  yet,  if  you  consider  one  series  with 
another,  they  have  no  unity  in  time.  And  they  are 
not  connected  in  time  with  what  we  call  the  course 
of  our  "  real  "  events.  Suppose  that  I  am  asked  how 
the  occurrences  in  the  tale  of  Imogen  are  related 
in  time  to  each  adventure  of  Sindbad  the  Sailor, 
and  how  these  latter  stand  to  my  dream-events  both 
of  last  night  and  last  year — such  questions  surely 
have  no  meaning.  Apart  from  the  chance  of  local 
colour  we  see  at  once  that  between  these  temporal 
occurrences  there  is  no  relation  of  time.  You  can- 
not say  that  one  comes  before,  or  comes  after,  the 


212 


REALITY. 


-1 


Other.  And  again  to  date  these  events  by  their 
appearance  in  my  mental  world  would  be  surely 
preposterous.  It  would  be  to  arrange  all  events, 
told  of  by  books  in  a  library,  according  to  the  various 
dates  of  publication — the  same  story  repeating  itself 
in  fact  with  every  edition,  and  to-day's  newspaper 
and  history  simultaneous  throughout.  And  this 
absurdity  perhaps  may  help  us  to  realize  that  the 
successive  need  have  no  temporal  connection. 

"  Yes,  but,"  I  may  be  told,  "  all  these  series, 
imaginary  as  well  as  real,  are  surely  dated  as  events 
in  my  mental  history.  They  have  each  their  place 
there,  and  so  beyond  it  also  in  the  one  real  time- 
series.  And,  however  often  a  story  may  be  repeated 
in  my  mind,  each  occasion  has  its  own  date  and  its 
temporal  relations."  Indubitably  so,  but  such  an 
answer  is  quite  insufficient.  For  observe  first  that 
it  admits  a  great  part  of  what  we  urge.  It  has  to 
allow  plainly  that  the  times  within  our  "  unreal " 
series  have  no  temporal  interrelation.  Otherwise, 
for  instance,  the  time-succession,  when  a  story  is 
repeated,  would  infect  the  contents,  and  would  so 
make  repetition  impossible.  I  wish  first  to  direct 
notice  to  this  serious  and  fatal  admission. 

But,  when  we  consider  it,  the  objection  breaks 
down  altogether.  It  is  true  that,  in  a  sense  and 
more  or  less,  we  arrange  all  phenomena  as  events 
in  one  series.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  in  the 
universe,  as  a  whole,  the  same  tendency  holds 
good.  It  does  not  follow  that  all  phenomena  are 
related  in  time.  What  is  true  of  my  events  need 
not  hold  good  of  all  other  events ;  nor  again  is  my 
imperfect  way  of  unity  the  pattern  to  which  the 
Absolute  is  confined. 

What,  to  use  common  language,  I  call  "real" 
events  are  the  phenomena  which  I  arrange  in  a 
continuous  time-series.  This  has  its  oneness  in  the 
identity  of  my  personal  e.xistence.  What  is  pre- 
sented is  "  real,"  and  from  this  basis  I  construct  a 


TEMPORAL    AND    SPATIAL   APPEARANCE. 


13 


ii 


time-series,  both   backwards  and  forwards ;    and    I 
use  as  binding  links  the  identical  points  in  any  con- 
tent suggested.'     This  construction  I  call  the  "real'T 
series,   and    whatever  content  declines   to   take   its 
place    in    my  arrangement,    I    condemn    as   unreal. 
And  the  process  is  justifiable  within  limits.     If  we- 
mean  only  that  there  is  a  certain  group  of  pheno- 
mena,   and    that,    for    reality   within    this   group,   a 
certain  time-relation   is  essential,  that  doubtless  is 
true.      But  it  is  another  thing  to  assert  that  every, 
possible    phenomenon    has    a    place    in   this    series. 
And  it  is  once  more  another  thing  to   insist  that 
every    time-series    has    a    temporal    unity    in    the 
Absolute. 

Let  us  consider  the  first  point.  If  no  phenomenon 
is  "  real,"  except  that  which  has  a  place  in  my 
temporal  arrangement,  we  have,  first,  left  on  our 
hands  the  whole  world  of  "  Imagination."  The  fact 
of  succession  there  becomes  "  unreal,"  but  it  is  not 
got  rid  of  by  the  application  of  any  mere  label. 
And  I  will  mention  in  passing  another  difficulty, 
the  disruption  of  my  "  real  "  series  in  mental  disease. 
But — to  come  to  the  principle  —it  is  denied  that 
phenomena  can  exist  unless  they  are  in  temporal 
relation  with  my  world.  And  I  am  able  to  find  no 
ground  for  this  assumption.  When  I  ask  why,  and 
for  what,  reason,  there  cannot  be  changes  of  event, 
imperceptible  to  me  and  apart  from  my  time-series, 
jl  can  discover  no  answer.  So  far  as  I  can  see, 
khere  may  be  many  time-series  in  the  Absolute,  not 
related  at  all  for  one  another,  and  for  the  Absolute 
without  any  unity  of  time. 

And  this  brings  us  to  the  second  point.  For 
phenomena  to  exist  without  inter-connection  and 
unity,  I  agree  is  impossible.  But  I  cannot  perceive 
that  this  unity  must  either  be  temporal  or  else 
nothing.     That  would  be  to  take  a  way  of  regard - 

1  For  this  construction  see  p.    84,  and  Principles  of  Logic, 
Chapter  ii. 


,r 


-1-   '  *  • . 


214 


REAi.rrv. 


ing  things  which  even  we  find  imperfect,  and  to  set 
it  down  as  the  one  way  which  is  possible  for  the 
Absolute.  But  surely  the  Absolute  is  not  shut 
up  within  our  human  limits.  Already  we  have  seen 
that  its  harmony  is  something  beyond  relations. 
And,  if  so,  surely  a  number  of  temporal  .series  may, 
without  any  relation  in  time  to  one  another,  find  a 
way  of  union  within  its  all-inclusive  perfection. 
But,  if  so,  time  will  not  be  one,  in  the  sense  of 
forming  a  single  series.  There  will  be  many  times, 
all  of  which  are  at  one  in  the  Eternal — the  pos- 
sessor of  temporal  events  and  yet  timeless.  We 
have,  at  all  events,  found  no  shred  of  evidence  for 
any  other  unity  of  time. 

2.  I  will  pass  now  to  another  point,  the  direction 
of  time.  Just  as  we  tend  to  assume  that  all  pheno- 
mena form  one  series,  so  we  ascribe  to  every  series 
one  single  direction.  But  this  assumption  too  is 
baseless.  It  is  natural  to  set  up  a  point  in  the 
future  towards  which  all  events  run,  or  from  which 
they  arrive,  or  which  may  seem  to  serve  in  some 
other  way  to  give  direction  to  the  stream.  But 
examination  soon  shows  the  imperfection  of  this 
natural  view.  For  the  direction,  and  the  distinction 
between  past  and  future,  entirely  depends  upon  our 
experience.'  That  side,  on  which  fresh  sensations 
come  in,  is  what  we  mean  by  the  future.  In  our 
perception  of  change  elements  go  out,  and  some- 
thing new  comes  to  us  constantly  ;  and  we  construct 
the  time-series  entirely  with  reference  to  this  ex- 
perience. Thus,  whether  we  regard  events  as 
running  forwards  from  the  past,  or  as  emerging 
from  the  future,  in  any  case  we  use  one  method  of 
taking  our  bearings.  Our  fixed  direction  is  given 
solely  by  the  advent  of  new  arrivals. 

'  See  on  this  point  Mind,  xii.  579-82.  We  think  forwards, 
one  may  say,  on  the  same  principle  on  which  fish  feed  with  their 
heads  pointing  up  the  stream. 


TEMPORAL   AND   SPATIAL   APPEARANCE, 


215 


But,  if  this  is  so,  then  direction  is  relative  to  our 
world.  You  may  object  that  it  is  fixed  in  the  very 
nature  of  things,  and  so  imparts  its  own  order  to 
our  special  sphere.  Yet  how  this  assumption  can 
be  justified  I  do  not  understand.  Of  course  there 
is  something  not  ourselves  which  makes  this  differ- 
ence exist  in  our  beings,  something  too  which 
compels  us  to  arrange  other  lives  and  alt  our  facts 
in  one  order.  But  must  this  something,  therefore, 
in  reality  and  in  itself,  be  direction  ?  I  can  find  no 
reason  for  thinking  so.  No  doubt  we  naturally 
regard  the  whole  world  of  phenomena  as  a  single 
time-series  ;  we  assume  that  the  successive  contents 
'  of  every  other  finite  being  are  arranged  in  this  con- 
struction, and  we  take  for  granted  that  their  streams 
all  flow  in  one  direction.  But  our  assumption 
clearly  is  not  defensible.  For  let  us  suppose,  first, 
that  there  are  beings  who  can  come  in  contact  in 
no  way  with  that  world  which  we  experience.  Is 
this  supposition  self- contradictory,  or  anything  but 
possible  ?  And  let  us  suppose,  next,  that  in  the 
Absolute  the  direction  of  these  lives  runs  opposite 
to  our  own,  I  ask  again,  is  such  an  idea  either 
meaningless  or  untenable  ?  Of  course,  if  in  any 
way  /  could  experience  /Aetr  world,  I  should  fail  to 
understand  it.  Death  would  come  before  birth,  the 
blow  would  follow  the  wound,  and  all  must  seem  to 
be  irrational.  It  would  seem  to  me  so,  but  its 
inconsistency  would  not  exist  except  for  my  partial 
experience.  If  I  did  not  experience  their  order,  to 
me  it  would  be  nothing.  Or,  if  I  could  see  it  from 
a  point  of  view  beyond  the  limits  of  my  life,  I  might 
find  a  reality  which  itself  had,  as  such,  no  direction. 
And  I  might  there  perceive  characters,  which  for 
the  several  finite  beings  give  direction  to  their  lives, 
which,  as  such,  do  not  fall  within  finite  experience, 
and  which,  if  apprehended,  show  do^A  directions 
harmoniously  combined  in  a  consistent  intuition. 
To  transcend  experience  and  to  reach  a  world  of 


2l6 


REALITY. 


Things-in-themselves,  I  agree,  is  impossible.  But 
does  it  follow  that  the  whole  universe  in  every 
sense  is  a  possible  object  of  my  experience  ?  Is 
the  collection  of  things  and  persons,  which  makes 
my  world,  the  sum  total  of  existence  ?  I  know  no 
ground  for  an  affirmative  answer  to  this  question. 
That  many  material  systems  should  exist,  without  a 
material  central-point,  and  with  no  relation  in  space 
— where  is  the  self-contradiction  ? '  That  various 
worlds  of  experience  should  be  distinct,  and,  for 
themselves,  fail  to  enter  one  into  the  other — where 
is  the  impossibility  ?  That  arises  only  when  we 
endorse,  and  take  our  stand  upon,  a  prejudice. 
That  the  unity  in  the  Absolute  is  merely  our  kind 
of  unity,  that  spaces  there  must  have  a  spatial 
centre,  and  times  a  temporal  point  of  meeting — 
these  assumptions  are  based  on  nothing.  The 
opposite  is  possible,  and  we  have  seen  that  it  is  also 
necessary. 

/  It  is  not  hard  to  conceive  a  variety  of  time-series 
ibxisting  in  the  Absolute.  And  the  direction  of  each 
.series,  one  can  understand,  may  be  relative  to  itself, 
and  may  have,  as  such,  no  meaning  outside.  And 
we  might  also  imagine,  if  we  pleased,  that  these 
directions  run  counter,  the  one  to  the  other.  Let 
us  take,  for  example,  a  scheme  like  this  : 

abed 
bade 
e  d  a  b 
d    e     b     a 

Here,  if  you  consider  the  contents,  you  may  suppose 
the  whole  to  be  stationary.  It  contains  partial  views, 
but,  as  a  whole,  it  may  be  regarded  as  free  from 
change  and  succession.  The  change  will  fall  in  the 
perceptions  of  the  different  series.  And  the  diverse 
directions  of  these  series  will,  as  such,  not  exist  for 


See  Chapter  xxii. 


TEMPORAL    AND   SPATIAL   APPEARANCE. 


217 


the  whole.  The  greater  or  less  number  of  the 
various  series,  which  we  may  imagine  as  present, 
the  distinct  experience  which  makes  each,  together 
with  the  direction  in  which  it  runs — this  is  all 
matter,  we  may  say,  of  individual  feeling.  You  may 
take,  as  one  series  and  set  of  lives,  a  line  going  any 
way  you  please,  up  or  down  or  transversely.  And 
in  each  case  the  direction  will  be  given  to  it  by  sen- 
sation peculiar  to  itself.  Now  without  any  question 
these  perceptions  must  e.xist  in  the  whole.  They 
must  all  exist,  and  in  some  way  they  all  must  qualify 
the  Absolute.  But,  for  the  Absolute,  they  can  one 
counterbalance  another,  and  so  their  characters 
be  transmuted.  They  can,  with  their  successions, 
come  together  in  one  whole  in  which  their  special 
natures  are  absorbed. 

And,  if  we  chose  to  be  fanciful,  we  might  imagine 
something  more.  We  might  suppose  that,  corre- 
sponding to  each  of  our  lives,  there  is  another 
individual.  There  is  a  man  who  traverses  the  same 
history  with  ourselves,  but  in  the  opposite  direction. 
We  may  thus  imagine  that  the  successive  contents, 
which  make  my  being,  are  the  lives  also  of  one  or 
more  other  finite  souls.'  The  distinctions  between 
us  would  remain,  and  would  consist  in  an  additional 
element,  different  in  each  case.  And  it  would  be 
these  differences  which  would  add  to  each  its  own 
way  of  succession,  and  make  it  a  special  personality. 
The  differences,  of  course,  would  have  existence; 
but  in  the  Absolute,  once  more,  in  some  way  they 
might  lose  exclusiveness.  And,  with  this,  diversity 
of  direction,  and  all  succession  itself,  would,  as  such, 
disappear.  The  believer  in  second  sight  and  witch- 
craft might  find  in  such  a  view  a  wide  field  for  his 
vagaries.  But  I  note  this  merely  in  passing,  since 
to  myself  fancies  of  this  sort  are  not  inviting.  My 
purpose  here  has  been  simple.    I  have  tried  to  show 

'  On  the  possibility  of  this  compare  Chapter  xxiii. 


^/,- 


2l8  _  REALITY. 

•  tj  that  neither  for  the  temporal  unity  of  all  time-series, 
MC^  nor  for  the  community  of  their  direction,  is  there 
"^  ,  one  shred  of  evidence.  However  great  their  variet)'. 
■  ^  it  may  come  together  and  be  transformed  in  the 
Absolute.  And  here,  as  before,  possibility  is  all  we 
require  in  order  to  prove  reality. 

The  Absolute  is  above  relations,  and  therefore  we 

<;annot   construct  a    relational  scheme  which    could 

^exhibit  its  unity.      But  that  eternal   unity   is  made 

^sure  by  our  general  principle.     And  time  itself,  we 

>^have  now  seen,  can  afford  no  presumption  that  the 

universe  is  not  timeless.' 

There  is  a  remaining  difficulty  on  which  perhaps 
I  may  add  a  few  remarks.  I  may  be  told  that  in 
causation  a  succession  is  involved  with  a  direction 
not  reversible.  It  will  be  urged  that  many  of  the 
relations,  by  which  the  world  is  understood,  involve 
in  their  essence  time  sequent  or  co-existent.  And 
it  may  be  added  that  for  this  reason  time  conflicts 
with  the  Absolute.  But,  at  the  point  which  we  have 
reached,  this  objection  has  no  weight. 

Let  us  suppose,  first,  that  the  relation  of  cause 
and  effect  is  in  itself  defensible.  Yet  we  have  no 
knowledge  of  a  causal  unity  in  all  phenomena. 
Different  worlds  might  very  well  run  on  together 
in  the  universe,  side  by  side  and  not  in  one  series 
of  effects  and  causes.  They  would  have  a  unity  in 
the  Absolute,  but  a  unity  not  consisting  in  cause 
and  effect.  This  must  be  considered  possible  until 
we  find  some  good  argument  in  favour  of  causal 
unity.  And  then,  even  in  our  own  world,  how  un- 
satisfactory the  succession  laid  down  in  causation. 
It  is  really  never  true  that  mere  a  produces  mere  d. 
It  is  true  only  when  we  bring  in  the  unspecified 
background,  and,  apart  from  that,  such  a  statement 
is   made    merely    upon    sufferance    (Chapters    vi., 

'  I  shall  make  some  remarks  on  Progress  in  Chapter  xxvi. 


TEMPORAL   AND   SPATIAL   APPEARANCE. 


319 


■xx'iu.,  xxiv.).  And  the  whole  succession  itself, 
if  defensible,  may  admit  of  transformation.  We 
assert  that  {X)d  is  the  effect  which  follows  on  (A')d!, 
but  perhaps  the  two  are  identical.  The  succession 
and  the  difference  are  perhaps  appearances,  which 
exist  only  for  a  view  which  is  isolated  and  defective. 
The  successive  relation  may  be  a  truth  which,  when 
^lled  out,  is  transmuted,  and  which,  when  supple- 
mented, must  lose  its  character  in  the  Absolute.  It 
may  thus  be  the  fragment  of  a  higher  truth  not 
prejudicial  to  identity. 

Such  considerations  will  turn  the  edge  of  any 
objection  directed  against  our  Absolute  from  the 
i^'round  of  causation.  But  we  have  seen,  in  addition, 
in  our  sixth  chapter  that  this  ground  is  indefensible. 
13y  its  own  discrepancy  causation  points  beyond 
itself  to  higher  truth  ;  and  I  will  briefly,  here  once 
more,  attempt  to  make  this  plain.  Causation  im- 
plies change,  and  it  is  difficult  to  know  of  what  we 
may  predicate  change  without  contradiction.  To 
say  "a  becomes  d,  and  there  is  nothing  which 
changes,"  is  really  unmeaning.  For,  if  there  is 
change,  something  changes ;  and  it  is  able  to 
change  because  something  is  permanent.  But  then 
how  predicate  the  change  ?  "Xa  becomes  Xd  "  ;  but, 
if  A'  is  a  and  afterwards  d,  then,  since  a  has  ceased 
to  qualify  it,  a  change  has  happened  within  A'.  But, 
if  so,  then  apparently  we  require  a  further  per- 
manent. But  if,  on  the  other  side,  to  avoid  this 
•danger,  we  take  Xa  not  to  change,  we  are  other- 
wise ruined.  For  we  have  somehow  to  predicate 
of  X  both  elements  at  once,  and  where  is  the  suc- 
cession ?  The  successive  elements  co-exist  unintel- 
ligibly within  X,  and  succession  somehow  is  degraded 
to  mere  appearance. 

To  put  it  otherwise,  we  have  the  statement  "  X 
is  first  Xa,  and  later  also  Xb."  But  how  can  "  later 
also  ^ "  be  the  truth,  if  before  mere  a  was  true  ? 
Shall  we  answer  "  No,  not  mere  a ;  it  is  not  —- **♦ 


220 


REALITY. 


Xa,  but  Xa  (given  c),  which  is  later  also  3  "  ?     But 

still    face    to  face  with  a  like 


t  there  is  a  dtnerence 
is  none,  our  assertion  in 
For  we  cannot  justify  the 


leaves 
obstacle  ;    for,    if  Xa  {c) 
separate   these   terms  ? 
between  them,  or  if  there 
either  case  is  untenable. 

difference  if  it  exists,  or  our  making  it,  if  it  does  not 
exist.  Hence  we  are  led  to  the  conclusion  that 
subject  arid  predicate  are  identical,  and  that  the 
separation  and  the  change  are  only  appearance. 
They  are  a  character  assuredly  to  be  added  to  the 
whole,  but  added  in  a  way  beyond  our  compre- 
hension. They  somehow  are  lost  except  as 
elements  in  a  higher  identity. 

Or,  again,  say  that  the  present  state  of  the  world 
is  the  cause  of  that  total  state  which  follows  next 
on  it.  Here,  again,  is  the  same  self-contradiction. 
For  how  can  one  state  a  become  a  different  state  d  ? 
It  must  either  do  this  without  a  reason,  and  that 
seems  absurd  ;  or  else  the  reason,  being  additional, 
forthwith  constitutes  a  new  a,  and  so  on  for  ever. 
We  have  the  differences  of  cause  and  effect,  with 
their  relation  of  time,  and  we  have  no  way  in  which 
it  is  possible  to  hold  these  together.  Thus  we  are 
drawn  to  the  view  that  causation  is  but  partial,  and 
that  we  have  but  changes  of  mere  elements  within 
a  complex  whole.  But  this  view  gives  no  help  until 
we  carry  it  still  further,  and  deny  that  the  whole 
state  of  the  world  can  change  at  all.  So  we  glide 
into  the  doctrine  that  partial  changes  are  no  change, 
but  counterbalance  one  another  within  a  whole 
which  persists  unaltered.  And  here  certainly  the 
succession  remains  as  an  appearance,  the  special 
value  of  which  we  are  unable  to  explain.  But  the 
causal  sequence  has  drifted  beyond  itself  and  into 
a  reality  which  essentially  is  timeless.  And  hence, 
in  attempting  an  objection  to  the  eternity  of  the 
Absolute,  causation  would  deny  a  principle  implied 
in  its  own  nature. 


TEMPORAL    AND    SPATIAL    APPEARANCE. 


221 


At  the  end  of  this  chapter,  I  trust,  we  may  have 
reached  a  conviction,  We  may  be  convinced,  not 
merely  as  before,  that  time  is  unreal,  but  that  its 
appearance  also  is  compatible  with  a  timeless  uni- 
verse. It  is  only  when  misunderstood  that  change 
precludes  a  belief  in  eternity.  Rightly  apprehended 
it  affords  no  presumption  against  our  doctrine. 
Our  Absolute  must  be  ;  and  now,  in  another  respect, 
again,  it  has  turned  out  possible.  Surely  therefore 
it  is  real. 

I  shall  conclude  this  chapter  with  a  few  remarks  i 
on  the  nature  of  space.'  In  passing  to  this  from  \ 
time,  we  meet  with  no  difficulties  that  are  new,  and 
a  very  few  words  seem  all  that  is  wanted.  I  am 
not  attempting  here  to  e.vplain  the  origin  of  space  ; 
and  indeed  to  show  how  it  comes  to  e.xist  seems  to 
me  not  possible.  And  we  need  not  yet  ask  how, 
on  our  main  view,  we  are  to  understand  the  physical 
world.  That  necessary  question  is  one  which  it  is 
better  to  defer.  The  point  here  at  issue  is  this. 
Does  the  form  of  space  make  our  reality  inipossible.' 
Is  its  existence  a  thing  incompatible  with  the  Abso- 
lute }  Such  a  question,  in  my  judgment,  requires 
little  discussion. 

If  we  could  prove  that  the  spatial  form  were  a 
<levelopment,  and  so  secondary,  that  would  give  us 
little  help.  The  proof  could  in  no  degree  lessen  the 
reality  of  a  thing  which,  in  any  case,  does  e.xist.  It 
would  at  most  serve  as  an  indication  that  a  further 
growth  in  development  might  merge  the  space- form 
in  a  higher  mode  of  perception.  But  it  is  better 
not  to  found  arguments  upon  that  which,  at  most,  is 
hardly  certain. 

What  I  would  stand  upon  is  the  essential  nature  \ 
of  space.  For  that,  as  we  saw  in  our  First  Book,  1 
is  entirely  inconsistent     It  attempts  throughout  to 


I  must  here  refer  back  to  Chapter  iv. 


222  REALITY. 

reach  something  which  transcends  its  powers.     It 
made  an  effort  to  find  and  to  maintain  a  solid  self- 
existence,  but  that  effort  led  it  away  into  the  infinite 
process  both  on  the  inside  and  externally.     And  its  . 
evident  inability  to  rest  within  itself  points  to  the   I 
solution  of  its  discords.     Space  seeks  to  lose  itself  I 
in  a  higher  perception,  where  individuality  is  gained 
without  forfeit  of  variety.^ 

And  against  the  possibility  of  space  being  in  this 
way  absorbed  in  a  non-spatial  consummation,  I 
know  of  nothing  to  set.  Of  course  how  in  particular 
this  can  be,  we  are  unable  to  lay  down.  But  our 
ignorance  in  detail  is  no  objection  against  the 
general  possibility.  And  this  possible  absorption, 
we  have  seen,  is  also  necessary. 

*  The  question  as  to  whether,  and  in  what  sense,  space 
possesses  a  unity,  may  be  deferred  to  Chapter  xxii.  A  dis- 
cussion on  this  point  was  required  in  the  case  of  time.  But 
an  objection  to  our  Absolute  would  hardly  be  based  on  the  unity 
of  space. 


CHAPTER    XIX. 


THE  THIS  AND  THE  MINE. 


We  have  seen  that  the  forms  of  space  and  time 
supply  no  good  objection  to  the  individuality  of  the 
Absolute.  But  we  have  not  yet  faced  a  difficulty 
which  perhaps  may  prove  more  serious.  There  is 
the  fact  which  is  denoted  by  the  title  of  the  present 
chapter.  The  particularity  of  feeling,  it  may  be 
contended,  is  an  obstacle  which  declines  to  be  en- 
gulfed. The  "this"  and  the  "mine"  are  undeni- 
able ;  and  upon  our  theory,  it  may  be  said,  they  are 
both  inexplicable. 

The  "  this "  and  the  "  mine "  are  names  which 
stand  for  the  immediacy  of  feeling,  and  each  serves 
to  call  attention  to  one  side  of  that  fact.  There 
is  no  "  mine  "  which  is  not  "  this,"  nor  any  "  this  " 
which  fails,  in  a  sense,  to  be  "  mine."  The  immed- 
iate fact  must  always  come  as  something  felt  in  an 
experience,  and  an  experience  always  must  be 
particular,  and,  in  a  sense  perhaps,  "  unique."  But 
I  shall  not  enter  on  all  the  problems  implied  in 
the  last  word.  I  am  not  going  to  inquire  here  how 
we  are  able  to  transcend  the  "  this-mine,"  for  that 
question  will  engage  us  hereafter  {Chapter  xxi.), 
and  the  problem  now  before  us  is  confined  to  a  single 
point.  We  are  to  assume  that  there  does  exist  an 
indefinite  number  of  "  this-mines,"  of  immediate  ex- 
periences of  the  felt.  And,  assuming  this  fact,  we 
are  to  ask  if  it  is  compatible  with  our  general  view. 

The  difficulty  of  this  inquiry  arises  in  great  part 
from   vagueness.      The    "this"    and    "mine"   are 


224 


REALITY. 


taken  as  both  positive  and  negative.  They  are  to 
possess  a  singular  reality,  and  they  are  to  own  in 
some  sense  an  exclusive  character.  And  from  this 
shiftincT  basis  a  rash  conclusion  is  hastily  drawn. 
But  the  singular  reality,  after  all,  may  not  be  single 
and  self-existenL  And  the  exclusive  character, 
perhaps,  may  be  included  and  taken  up  in  the 
Whole.  And  it  is  these  questions  which  we  must 
endeavour  to  clear  up  and  discuss.  I  will  begin 
with  what  we  have  called  the  positive  aspect. 

The  "  this  "  and  the  "  mine  "  express  the  immed- 
iate character  of  feeling,  and  the  appearance  of  this 
character  in  a  finite  centre.  Feeling  may  stand  for 
a  psychical  stage  before  relations  have  been  devel- 
oped, or  it  may  be  used  generally  for  an  experience 
which  is  not  indirect  (Chapters  ix.,  xxvi.,  and 
xxvii.).  At  any  time  all  that  we  suffer,  do,  and 
are,  forms  one  psychical  totality.  It  is  experienced 
all  together  as  a  co-existing  mass,  not  perceived  as 
parted  and  joined  by  relations  even  of  co-existence. 
It  contains  all  relations,  and  distinctions,  and  every 
ideal  object  that  at  the  moment  exists  in  the  soul. 
It  contains  them,  not  specially  as  such  and  with 
exclusive  stress  on  their  content  as  predicated,  but 
directly  as  they  are  and  as  they  qualify  the  psychical 
"  that."  And  again  any  part  of  this  co-existence, 
to  which  we  attend,  can  be  viewed  integrally  as  one 
feeling. 

Now  whatever  is  thus  directly  experienced — so 
far  as  it  is  not  taken  otherwise — is  "  this "  and 
"  mine."  And  all  such  presentation  without  doubt 
has  peculiar  reality.  One  might  even  contend  that 
logically  to  transcend  it  is  impossible,  and  that  there 
is  no  rational  way  to  a  plurality  of  "  this-mines." 
But  such  a  plurality  we  have  agreed  for  the  present 
to  assume.  The  "  this,"  it  is  however  clear,  brings 
a  sense  of  superior  reality,  a  sense  which  is  far  from 
being  wholly  deceptive  and  untrue.  For  all  our 
knowledge,  in  the  first  place,  arises  from  the  "  this." 


THE    THIS    AND    THE    MINE. 


22! 


It  is  the  one  source  of  our  experience,  and  every 
element  of  the  world  must  submit  to  pass  through 
it.  And  the  "  this,"  secondly,  has  a  genuine  feature 
of  ultimate  reality.  With  however  great  imper- 
fection and  inconsistency  it  owns  an  individual 
character.  The  "  this  "  is  real  for  us  in  a  sense  in 
which  nothing  else  is  real. 

Reality  is  being  in  which  there  is  no  division  of 
content  from  existence,  no  loosening  of  "  what  "  from 
"that."  Reality,  in  short,  means  what  it  stands  for. 
and  stands  for  what  it  means.  And  the  "this" 
possesses  to  some  extent  the  same  wholeness  of 
character.  Both  the  "  this "  and  reality,  we  may 
say,  are  immediate.  But  reality  is  immediate  be-1 
cause  it  includes  and  is  superior  to  mediation.  It 
developes,  and  it  brings  to  unity,  the  distinctions  it 
contains.  The  "this"  is  immediate,  on  the  other 
side,  because  it  is  at  a  level  below  distinctions.  Its 
elements  are  but  conjoined,  and  are  not  connected. 
And  its  content,  hence,  is  unstable,  and  essentially 
tends  to  disruption,  and  by  its  own  nature  must  pass 
beyond  the  being  of  the  "  this."  But  every  "  this  " 
still  shows  a  passing  aspect  of  undivided  singleness. 
In  the  mental  background  specially  such  a  fused 
unity  remains  a  constant  factor,  and  can  never  be 
dissipated  (Chapters  ix.,  x.,  xxvii.).  And  it  is 
such  an  unbroken  wholeness  which  gives  the  sense 
of  individual  reality.  When  we  turn  from  mere 
ideas  to  sensation,  we  experience  in  the  "  this  "  a 
revelation  of  freshness  and  life.  And  that  revela- 
tion, if  misleading,  is  never  quite  untrue.* 

We  may,  for  the  present,  take  "  this "  as  the 
positive  feeling  of  direct  experience.  In  that  sense 
it  will  be  either  general  or  special.      It  will  be  the 

'  It  is  mere  thoughtlessness  th.it  finds  in  Resistance  the  one 
manifestation  of  reaUly.     For  resistance,  in  (he  first  pLice,  is  full 
of  unsolved  contr.idictions,  and  is  also  fixed  and  consists  in  that 
very  character.     And  in  the  second  ])lace,  wh.it  experienc 
come  as  more  actual  than  sensuous  pain  or  pleasure  ? 

A.  R.  Q 


TI 


226 


REALITY. 


character  which  we  feel  always,  or  again  in  union 
with  some  particular  content.  And  we  have  to  ask 
if,  so  understood,  the  "  this  "  is  incompatible  with 
our  Absolute. 


The  question,  thus  asked,  seems  to  call  for  but 
little  discussion.  Since  for  us  the  Absolute  is  a 
whole,  the  sense  of  immediate  reality,  we  must  sup- 
pose, may  certainly  qualify  it.  And,  again,  I  find 
no  difficulty  when  we  pass  to  the  special  meaning  of 
"  this."  With  every  presentation,  with  each  chance 
mixture  of  psychical  elements,  we  have  the  feeling 
of  one  particular  datum.  We  have  the  felt  exist- 
ence of  a  peculiar  sensible  whole.  And  here  we 
find  beyond  question  a  positive  content,  and  a  fresh 
element  which  has  to  be  included  within  our  Abso- 
lute. But  in  such  a  content  there  is,  so  far,  nothing 
which  could  repel  or  exclude.  There  is  no  feature 
there  which  could  resist  embracement  and  absorp- 
tion by  the  whole. 

The  fact  of  actual  fragmentariness,  I  admit,  we 
cannot  explain.  That  experience  should  take  place 
in  finite  centres,  and  should  wear  the  form  of  finite 
"  thisness,"  is  in  the  end  inexplicable  (Chapter 
xxvi. ).  But  to  be  inexplicable,  and  to  be  incom- 
patible, are  not  the  same  thing.  And  in  such  frag- 
mentariness, viewed  as  positive,  I  see  no  objection 
to  our  view.  The  plurality  of  presentations  is  a 
iact,  and  it,  therefore,  makes  a  ditlerence  to  our 
Absolute.  It  exists  in.  and  it,  therefore,  must  qualify 
the  whole.  And  the  universe  is  richer,  we  may  be 
sure,  for  all  dividedness  and  variety.  Certainly  in 
detail  we  do  not  know  how  the  separation  is  over- 
come, and  we  cannot  point  to  the  product  which  is 
gained,  in  each  case,  by  that  resolution.  But  our 
ignorance  here  is  no  ground  for  rational  opposition. 
Our  principle  assures  us  that  the  Absolute  is  superior 
to  partition,  and  in  some  way  is  perfected  by  it. 
And  we  have   found,   as  yet,   no    reason    even  to 


THE   THIS   AND   THE    MINE. 


227 


doubt 
cove 


if  th 


IS    resu 


It 


IS 


pos 


SI 


bk 


We    have    dis- 


red,  as  yet,  nothing  which  seems  able  from  any 
side  to  stand  out.  There  is  no  element  such  as 
could  hesitate  to  blend  with  the  rest  and  to  be  dis- 
solved in  a  higher  unity. 

If  the  whole  could  be  an  arrangement  of  mere 
ideas,  if  it  were  a  system  barely  intellectual,  the  case 
would  be  altered.  We  might  combine  such  ideas,  it 
would  not  matter  how  ingeniously  ;  but  we  could 
not  frame,  and  we  should  not  possess,  a  product  con- 
taining what  we  feel  to  be  imparted  directly  by  the 
"  this."  I  admit  that  inability,  and  I  urge  it,  as  yet 
another  confirmation  and  support  of  our  doctrine. 
For  our  Absolute  was  not  a  mere  intellectual  system. 
It  was  an  experience  overriding  every  species  of 
one-sidedness,  and  it  was  a  living  intuition,  an  im- 
mediate individuality.  Hut,  if  so,  the  opposition  of 
the  "  this  "  becomes  at  once  unmeaning.  For  feel- 
ings, each  possessing  a  nature  of  its  own,  may  surely 
come  together,  and  be  fused  in  the  Absolute.  And, 
so  far  is  such  a  resolution  from  appearing  impossible, 
that  I  confess  to  me  it  seems  most  natural  and  easy. 
That  partial  experiences  should  run  together,  and 
should  unite  their  deliverances  to  produce  one  richer 
whole — is  there  anything  here  incredible  i*  1 1  would 
indeed  be  strange  if  bare  positive  feelings  proved 
recalcitrant  and  solid,  and  stood  out  against  absorp- 
tion. F'or  their  nature  clearly  is  otherwise,  and 
they  must  be  blended  in  the  one  experience  of  the 
Absolute.  This  consummation  evidently  is  real, 
because  on  our  principle  it  is  necessary,  and  because 
again  we  have  no  reason  to  doubt  that  it  is  possible. 
And  with  so  much,  we  may  pass  from  the  positive 
aspect  of  the  "  this." 

For  the  "this"  and  "  mine,"  it  is  clear,  are  taken 
also  as  negative.  They  are  set  up  as  in  some  way 
opposed  to  the  Absolute,  and  they  are  considered,  in 
some  sense,  to  own  an  exclusive  character.     And 


228 


REALITY. 


that  their  character,  in  part,  is  exclusive  cannot  be 
denied  ;  but  the  question  is  in  what  sense,  and  how 
far,  they  possess  it.  For,  if  the  repulsion  is  relative 
and  holds  merely  within  the  one  whole,  it  is  compat- 


ible at 


ith 


if  tht 


iiverse. 
immediate  experience,  viewed  as  positive,  is 


An 

so  far  not  exclusive.  It  is,  so  far,  what  it  is,  and  it 
does  not  repel  anything.  Hut  the  "  this  "  certainly 
is  used  also  with  a  negative  bearing.  It  may  mean 
"  this  one,"  in  distinction  from  that  one  and  the 
other  one.  And  here  it  shows  obviously  an  exclu- 
sive aspect,  and  it  implies  an  external  and  negative 
relation.  But  every  such  relation,  we  have  found, 
'  is  inconsistent  with  itself  (Chapter  iii.).  For  it 
.  exists  within,  and  by  virtue  of  an  embracing  unity, 
and  apart  from  that  totality,  both  itself  and  its  terms 
would  be  nothing.  And  the  relation  also  must 
penetrate  the  inner  being  of  its  terms.  "  This,"  in 
other  words,  would  tio/  exclude  "  that,"  unless  in 
the  exclusion  "  this,"  so  far,  passed  out  of  itself. 
Its  repulsion  of  others  is  thus  incompatible  with  self- 
contained  singleness,  and  involves  subordination  to 
an  including  whole.  But  to  the  ultimate  whole 
nothing  can  be  opposed,  or  even  related. 

And  the  self-transcendent  character  of  the  "  this  " 
I  is,  on  all  sides,  open  and  plain.  Appearing  as  im- 
mediate, it,  on  the  other  side,  has  contents  which 
are  not  consistent  with  themselves,  and  which  refer 
tliemselves  beyond.  Hence  the  inner  nature  of  the 
"  this "  leads  it  to  pass  outside  itself  towards  a 
higher  totality.  And  its  negative  aspect  is  but  one 
appearance  of  this  general  tendency.  Its  very  ex- 
chisiveness  involves  the  reference  of  itself  beyond 
itself,  and  is  but  a  proof  of  its  necessary  absorption 
in  the  Absolute.' 

'  The  above  conclusion  applies  emphaticaJly  to  the  "  this  "  as 
signifying  the  point  in  which  I  am  said  lo  encounter  reality.  All 
contact  necessarily  implies  a  unity,  in  and  through  which  it  lakes 
place,  and  my  self  and  the  reality  are,  here,  but  partial  appear- 


THE    THIS    AND    THE    MINE. 


229 


And  if  the  "this"  is  asserted  to  be  all-excUisive 
because  it  is  "  unique,"  the  discussion  of  that  point 
need  not  long  detain  us.  The  term  may  imply  that 
nothing  else  but  the  "this-mine"  is  real,  and,  in  that 
case,  the  question  has  been  deferred  to  Chapter 
xxi.  And,  if  "unique"  means  that  what  is  felt 
once  can  never  be  felt  again,  such  an  assertion, 
taken  broadly,  seems  even  untrue.  For  if  feelings, 
the  same  in  character,  do  in  fact  not  recur,  we  at 
least  hardly  can  deny  that  their  recurrence  is  pos--- 
sible.  The  "  this"  is  unique  really  so  far  as  it  is  a 
member  in  a  series,  and  so  far  as  that  series  is  taken 
as  distinct  from  all  others.'  And  only  in  this  sense 
can  we  call  its  recurrence  impossible.  But  here 
with  uniqueness  once  more  we  have  negative  rela- 
tions, and  these  relations  involve  an  inclusive  unity. 
Uniqueness,  in  this  sense,  does  not  resist  assimila- 
tion by  the  Absolute.  It  is,  on  the  other  hand,  itself 
incompatible  with  exclusive  singleness. 

Into  the  nature  of  self-will  I  shall  at  present  not 
enter.  This  is  opposition  attempted  by  a  finite 
subject  against  its  proper  whole.  And  we  may  see 
at  once  that  such  discord  and  negation  can  subserve 
unity,  and  can  contribute  towards  the  perfection  of 
the  universe.  It  is  connection  with  the  central  fire 
which  produces  in  the  element  this  burning  sense 
of  selfness.  And  the  collision  is  resolved  within 
that  harmony  where  centre  and  circumference  are 
one.  But  I  shall  return  in  another  place  to  the  dis- 
cussion of  this  matter  (Chapter  xxv.). 

We  have  found  that  the  "this,"  taken  as  exclu- 
sive, proclaims  itself  relative,  and  in  that  relation 
forfeits  its  independence.     And  we  have  seen  that, 

ances.     And  the  "mine"  never,  we  may  say,  could  strike  me  as 
"  not-mine,"  unless,  precisely  so  far  as  it  does  so,   it  is  a  mere 
factor   in    my  experience.      I    have  spoken   above  on   the  true 
meaning  of  ihat  sense  of  reality  which  is  given  by  the  "  this." 
'  On  this  point  compire  Principles  oj  Logic ,  Chapter  ii. 


A 


REALITY. 


as  positive,  the  "  this"  is  not  exclusive  at  all.  The 
"  this "  is  inconsistent  always,  but,  so  far  as  it 
excludes,  so  far  already  has  it  begun  internally  to 
suffer  dissipation.  We  may  now,  with  advantage 
perhaps,  view  the  matter  in  a  somewhat  different 
way.  There  is,  I  think,  a  vague  notion  that  some 
content  sticks  irremovably  within  the  "  this,"  or 
that  in  the  "  this,"  again,  there  is  something  which 
is  not  content  at  all.  In  either  case  an  element  is 
offered,  which,  it  is  alleged,  cannot  be  absorbed  by 
the  Whole.  And  an  examination  of  these  prejudices 
may  throw  some  light  on  our  general  view. 

In  the  "  this,"  it  may  appear  first,  there  is  some- 
thing more  than  content.  For  by  combining  quali- 
ties indefinitely  we  seem  unable  to  arrive  at  the 
"  this."  The  same  difficulty  may  be  stated  perhaps 
in  a  way  which  points  to  its  solution.  The  "  this  " 
on  one  hand,  we  may  say,  is  nothing  at  all  beside 
content,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  "  this  "  is  not 
content  at  all.  For  in  the  term  "  content "  there 
lies  an  ambiguity.  It  may  mean  a  "  what  "  that  is, 
or  again,  is  not,  distinct  from  its  "that."  And  the 
"  this,"  we  have  already  seen,  has  inconsistent 
aspects.  It  offers,  from  one  aspect,  an  immediate 
undivided  experience,  a  whole  in  which  "  that"  and 
"  what  "  arc  felt  as  one.  And  here  content,  as  imply- , 
ing  distinction,  will  be  absent  from  the  "this."  But 
such  an  undivided  feeling,  we  have  also  seen,  ii  a 
positive  experience.  It  does  not  even  attempt  to 
resist  assimilation  by  our  Absolute. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  use  content  generally, 
and  if  we  employ  it  in  the  sense  of  "  what  "  without 
distinction  from  "that" — if  we  take  it  to  mean  some- 
thing which  is  experienced,  and  which  is  nothing 
but  experience — then,  most  emphatically,  the  "this" 
is  not  anything  but  content.  For  there  is  nothing 
in  it  or  about  it  which  can  be  more  than  experience. 
And  in  it  there  is  further  no  feature  which  cannot 
be  made  a  quality.     Its  various  aspects  can  all  be 


THE   THIS   AND    THE    MINE. 


23' 


separated  by  distinction  and  analysis,  and,  one  after 
another,  can  thus  be  brought  forward  as  ideal  pre- 
dicates. This  assertion  holds  of  that  immediate 
Sense  of  a  special  reality,  which  we  found  above  in 
the  character  of  each  felt  complex.  There  is,  in 
brief,  no  fragment  of  the  "  this"  such  that  it  cannot 
form  the  object  of  a  distinction.  And  hence  the 
"  this,"  in  the  first  place,  is  mere  e.xperience  through- 
out ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  throughout  it  may  be 
called  intelligible.  It  owns  no  aspect  which  refuses 
to  become  a  quality,  and  in  its  turn  to  play  the  part 
of  an  ideal  predicate.' 

But  it  is  easy  here  to  deceive  ourselves  and  to  fall 
into  error.  For  taking  a  given  whole,  or  more  prob- 
ably selecting  one  portion,  we  begin  to  distinguish 
and  to  break  up  its  confused  co-e.xistence.  And, 
having  thus  possessed  ourselves  of  definite  contents 
and  of  qualities  in  relation,  we  call  on  our  "  this  "  to 
identify  itself  with  our  discrete  product.  And,  on 
the  refusal  of  the  "  this,"  we  charge  it  with  stub- 
born e.xclusiveness.  It  is  held  to  possess  either  in 
its  nature  a  repellent  content,  or  something  else,  at 
all  events,  which  is  intractable.  But  the  whole  con- 
clusion is  fallacious.  For,  if  we  have  not  mutilated 
our  subject,  we  have  at  least  added  a  feature  which 
originally  was  not  there — a  feature,  which,  if  intro- 
.  duced,  must  of  necessity  burst  the  "  this,"  and  de- 
stroy it  from  within.  The  "  this,"  we  have  seen,  is 
a  unity  below  relations  and  ideas ;  and  a  unity,  able 
to  develope  and  to  harmonize  all  distinctions,  is  not 
found  till  we  arrive  at  ultimate  Reality.  Hence  the 
"  this  "  repels  our  offered  predicates,  not  because  its 
nature  goes  beyond,  but  rather  because  that  nature 
comes  short.  It  is  not  more,  we  may  say,  but  less 
than  our  distinctions. 

And  to  our  mistake  in  principle  we  add  probably 
an  error  in  practice.      For  we  have   failed  probably 

'  Compare  here  p.  175,  and  Principles  0/ Logic,  chapter  ii. 


232 


REALITY. 


to  exhaust  the  full  dehvcrance  of  our  "this," and  the 
residue,  left  there  by  our  mere  failure,  is  then  as- 
sumed blindly  to  stand  out  as  an  irreducible  aspect. 
For,  if  we  have  confined  our  "this"  to  but  one  por- 
tion of  the  felt  totality,  we  have  omitted  from  our 
analysis,  perhaps,  the  positive  aspect  of  its  special 
unity.  Out  our  analysis,  if  so,  is  evidently  incom- 
plete and  misleading.  And  then,  perhaps  again, 
qualifyin<j  our  limited  "  this"  by  exclusive  relations, 
we  do  not  see  that  in  these  we  have  added  a  factor 
to  its  original  content.  And  what  we  have  added, 
and  have  also  overlooked,  is  then  charged  to  the 
native  repellence  of  the  "  this."  But  if  again,  on 
the  other  hand,  our  "  this  "  is  not  taken  as  limited, 
if  it  is  to  be  the  entire  complex  of  one  present, 
viewed  without  relation  even  to  its  own  future  and 
past — -other  errors  await  us.  For  the  detail  here  is 
so  great  that  complete  exhaustion  is  hardly  possible. 
And  so,  setting  down  as  performed  that  which  is  in 
fact  impracticable,  we  once  more  stumble  against  a 
residue  which  is  due  wholly  to  our  weakness.  And 
we  are  helped,  perhaps,  further  into  mistake  by  an- 
other source  of  fallacy.  We  may  confuse  the  feeling 
which  we  study  with  the  feeling  which  we  are.  At 
tempting,  so  far  as  we  can,  to  make  an  object  of 
some  (past)  psychical  whole,  we  may  unawares  seek 
there  every  feature  which  we  now  are  and  feel. 
And  we  may  attribute  our  ill  success  to  the  positive 
obstinacy  of  the  resisting  object.' 

The  total  subject  of  all  predicates,  which  we  feel 
in  the  background,  can  be  exhausted,  we  may  say  in 
general,  by   no   predicate  or    predicates.     For   the 

*  Success  here  is  impossible  because,  apart  from  tlie  difficulty 
of  analysis  and  exhaustion,  our  present  observing  attitude  forms  a 
new  and  incompatible  feature.  It  is  an  element  in  our  state  now, 
which  {^x  h'f'.)  was  absent  from  our  state  then.  In  this  connec- 
tion 1  may  remark  that  to  observe  a  feeling  is,  to  some  extent, 
aJw.iys  to  alter  it.  For  the  purjwse  in  hand  that  alteration  may 
not  be  material,  but  it  will  in  all  cases  be  there.  I  have  touched 
on  this  subject  in  Prindpks  of  Logic,  p.  65,  note. 


THE    THIS    AND   THE    MINE. 


subject  holds  all  in  one,  while  predication  involves 
severance,  and  so  inflicts  on  its  subject  a  partial  loss 
of  unity.  And  hence  neither  ultimate  Reality,  nor 
any  "  this,"  can  consist  of  qualities.  That  is  one 
side  of  the  truth,  but  the  truth  also  has  another  side. 
Reality  owns  no  feature  or  aspect  which  cannot  in 
its  turn  be  distinguished,  none  which  cannot  in  this 
way  become  a  mere  adjective  and  predicate.  The 
same  conclusion  holds  of  the  "  this,"  in  whatever 
sense  you  take  it.  There  is  nothing-  there  which 
could  form  an  intractable  crudity,  nothing  which  can 
refuse  to  qualify  and  to  be  merged  in  the  ultimate 
Reality. 

We  have  found  that,  in  a  sense,  the  "  this"  is  not, 
and  does  not  own,  content.  But,  in  another  sense, 
we  have  seen  that  it  contains,  and  is,  nothing  else. 
We  may  now  pass  to  the  examination  of  a  second 
prejudice.  Is  there  any  content  which  is  owned  by 
and  sticks  in  the  "  this,"  and  which  thus  remains 
outstanding,  and  declines  union  with  a  higher  system.^ 
We  have  perceived,  on  the  contrary,  that  by  its 
essence  the  "this"  is  self-transcendenL  But  it  may 
repay  us  once  more  to  dwell  and  to  enlarge  on  this 
topic.  And  I  shall  not  hesitate  in  part  to  repeat 
results  which  we  have  gained  already. 

If  we  are  asked  what  content  is  appropriated  by 
the  "  this,"  we  may  reply  that  there  is  none.  There 
is  no  inalienable  content  which  belongs  to  the  "  this" 
or  the  "mine."  My  immediate  feeling,  when  I  say 
"  this,"  has  a  complex  character,  and  it  presents  a 
confused  detail  which,  we  have  seen,  is  content. 
But  it  has  no  "what"  which  belongs  to  it  as  a  separ- 
ate possession.  It  has  no  feature  identified  with 
its  own  private  exclusivity.  That  is  first  a  negative 
relation  which,  in  principle,  must  qualify  the  internal 
from  outside.  And  in  practice  we  find  that  each 
element  contained  can  refer  itself  elsewhere.  Each 
tends  naturally  towards  a  wider  whole  outside  of  the 


234 


REALITY. 


"  this."  Its  content,  we  may  say,  has  no  rest  till  it 
has  wandered  to  a  home  elsewhere.  The  mere 
"this"  can  appropriate  nothing. 

The  "  this "  appears  to  retain  content  solely 
through  our  failure.  I  may  express  this  otherwise 
by  calling  it  the  region  of  chance ;  for  chance  is 
something  given  and  for  us  not  yet  comprehended.' 
So  far  as  any.  element  falls  outside  of  some  ideal 
whole,  then,  in  relation  with  that  whole,  this  element 
is  chance.  Contingent  matter  is  matter  regarded  as 
that  which,  as  yet,  we  cannot  connect  and  include. 
It  has  not  been  taken  up,  as  we  know  that  it  must  be, 
within  some  ideal  whole  or  system.  Thus  one  and 
the  same  matter  both  is,  and  is  not,  contingent.  It 
is  chance  for  one  system  or  end,  while  in  relation 
with  another,  it  is  necessary.  All  chance  is  relative  ; 
and  the  content,  which  falls  in  the  mere  "this,"  is 
relative  chance.  So  far  as  it  remains  there,  that  is 
through  our  failure  to  refer  it  elsewhere.  It  is 
merely  "  this  "  so  far  as  it  is  not  yet  comprehended  ; 
and,  so  far  as  it  is  taken  as  a  feature  in  any  whole 
beyond  itself,  it  has  to  change  its  character.  It  is, 
in  that  respect  at  least,  forthwith  not  of  the  "this," 
but  only  in  it,  and  appearing  there.  And  such  ap- 
pearance, of  course,  is  not  always  presentation  to 
outer  sense.  All  that  in  any  way  we  e.xperience, 
we  must  experience  within  one  moment  of  presenta- 
tion. However  ideal  anything  may  be,  it  still  must 
appear  in  a  "  now."  And  everything  present  there, 
so  far  as  in  any  respect  it  is  not  subordinated  to  an 
ideal  whole — no  matter  what  that  whole  is — in  rela- 
tion to  that  defect  is  but  part  of  the  given.  It  may 
be  as  ideal  otherwise  as  you  please,  but  to  that  ex- 
tent it  fails  to  pass  beyond  immediate  fact.  Such  an 
element  so  far  is  still  immersed  in  the  "  now,"  "  mine," 
and  "  this."     It  remains  there,  but,  as  we  have  seen, 


'  For  a  further  discussion  of  the  meaning  of  Chance  see  Chapter 
xxiv. 


THK    THIS   AND   THE    MINE. 


235 


it  is   not  owned  and  appropriated,      ft  lingers,  we 
may  say,  precariously  and  provisionally. 

But  at  this  point  we  may  seem  to  have  encoun- 
tered an  obstacle.  For  in  the  given  fact  there  is 
always  a  co-e.xistence  of  elements ;  and  with  this 
co-existence  we  may  seem  to  ascribe  positive  content 
to  the  "this,"  Property,  we  asserted,  was  lacking  to 
it,  and  that  assertion  now  seems  questionable.  For 
co-e.\istence  supplies  us  with  actual  knowledge,  and 
none  the  less  it  seems  given  in  the  content  of  the 
"'  this."  The  objection,  however,  would  rest  on  mis- 
imderstanding.  It  is  positive  knowledge  when  I 
judge  that  in  a  certain  space  or  time  certain  features 
co-e.\ist.  But  such  knowledge,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
never  the  content  of  the  mere  "  this."  It  is  already 
a  synthesis,  imperfect  no  doubt,  but  still  plainly 
ideal.  And,  at  the  cost  of  repetition,  I  will  point 
this  out  brielly. 

{a)  The  place  or  time,  first,  may  be  .characterised 
by  inclusion  within  a  series.  We  may  mean  that,  in 
some  sense,  the  place  or  time  is  "  this  one,"  and  not 
another.  But,  if  so,  we  have  forthwith  transcended 
the  given.  We  are  using  a  character  which  implies 
inclusion  of  an  elefment  within  a  whole,  with  a  refer- 
ence beyond  itself  to  other  like  elements.  And  this 
of  course  goes  far  beyond  immediate  experience. 
To  suppose  that  position  in  a  series  can  belong  to 
the  mere  "  this,"  is  a  misunderstanding.' 

{i)  And  more  probably  the  objection  had  some- 
thing else  in  view.  It  was  not  conjunction  in  one 
moment,  as  distinct  from  another  moment,  which  it 
urged  was  positive  and  yet  belonged  to  the  "  this." 
It  meant  mere  coincidence  within  some  "  here  "  or 
some  "now,"  a  co- presentation  immediately  given 
without  regard  to  any  "  there"  or  "  then."  Such  a 
bare  conjunction  seems  to  be  something  possessed 
by  the  "  this,"  and  yet  offering  on  the  other  side  a 


'  See  above,  and  compare  also  Ciiapter  xxi. 


236 


REALITY. 


positive  character.      But  ag^ain,  and  in  this  form,  the 
objection  would  rest  on  a  mistake. 

The  bare  coincidence  of  the  content,  if  you  take 
it  as  merely  given  within  a  presentation,  and  if  you 
consider  it  entirely  without  any  further  reference 
beyond,  is  not  a  co-existence  of  elements.  I  do  not 
mean,  of  course,  that  a  whole  of  feeling  is  not  posi- 
tive at  all.  I  mean  that,  as  soon  as  you  have  made 
assertions  about  what  it  contains,  as  soon  as  you 
have  begun  to  treat  its  content  as  content,  you  have 
transcended  its  felt  unity.  For  consider  a  *' here  " 
or  *'  now."  and  observe  anything  of  what  is  in  it, 
and  you  have  instantly  acquired  an  ideal  synthesis 
(Chapter  xv.).  You  have  a  relation  which,  however 
impure,  is  at  once  set  free  from  time.  You  have 
gained  an  universal  which,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is  true 
always,  and  not  merely  at  the  present  moment ;  and 
this  universal  is  forthwith  used  to  qualify  reality  be- 
yond that  moment.  And  thus  the  co-existence  of  rt 
and  b,  we  may  say,  does  not  belong  to  the  mere 
"  this,"  but  it  is  ideal,  and  appears  there.  Within 
mere  feeling  it  has  doubtless  a  positive  character, 
but,  excluding  distinctions,  it  is  not,  in  one  sense, 
coincidence  at  all.  In  observing,  we  are  compelled 
to  observe  in  the  form  of  relations.  But  these  in- 
ternal relations  properly  do  not  belong  to  the  "this" 
itself.  For  its  character  does  not  admit  of  separa- 
tion and  distinction.  Hence  to  distinguish  elements 
within  this  whole,  and  to  predicate  a  relation  of  co- 
existence, is  self-contradictory.  Our  operation,  in 
its  result,  has  destroyed  what  it  acted  on  ;  and  the 
product  which  has  come  out,  was,  as  such,  never 
there.  Thus,  in  claiming  to  own  a  relation  of  co- 
existence and  a  distinction  of  content,  the  mere 
'  this  "  commits  suicide. 

From  another  point  of  view,  doubtless,  the  ob- 
served is  a  mere  coincidence,  when  compared,  that 
is,  with  a  purer  way  of  understanding.  The  rela- 
tion is  true,  subject  to  the  condition  of  a  confused 


THE    THIS   AND    THE    MINE. 


context,  which  is  not  comprehended.  And  hence 
the  connection  observed  is,  to  this  extent,  bare  con- 
junction and  mere  co-existence.  Or  it  is  chance, 
when  you  measure  it  by  a  higher  necessity.  It  is  a 
truth  conditioned  by  our  ignorance,  and  so  contin- 
gent and  belonging  to  the  "  this."  But,  upon  the 
other  side,  we  have  seen  that  the  "  this  "  can  hold 
nothing.  As  soon  as  a  relation  is  made  out,  that  is 
universal  knowledge,  and  has  at  once  transcended 
presentation.  For  within  the  merely  "  this "  no 
relation,  taken  as  such,  is  possible.  The  content,  if 
you  distinguish  it,  is  to  that  extent  set  free  from  felt 
unity.  And  there  is  no  "  what "  which  essentially 
adheres  to  the  bare  moment.  So  far  as  any  element 
remains  involved  in  the  confusion  of  feeling,  that  is 
but  due  to  our  defect  and  ignorance.  Hence,  to 
repeat,  the  "this,"  considered  as  mere  feeling,  is 
certainly  positive.  As  the  absence  of  universal 
relations,  the  "  this  "  again  is  negative.  But,  as  an 
attempt  to  make  and  to  retain  distinctions  of  content, 
the  "this  "  is  suicidal. 

It  is  so  too  with  the  *'  mere  mine."  We  hear  in 
discussions  on  morality,  or  logic,  or  cesthetics,  that 
a  certain  detail  is  '*  subjective,"  and  hence  irrelevant. 
Such  a  detail,  in  other  words,  belongs  to  the  "  mere 
mine."  And  a  mistake  may  be  made,  and  we  may 
imagine  that  there  is  matter  which,  in  itself,  is 
contingent.'  It  may  be  supposed  that  an  element, 
such  perhaps  as  pleasure,  is  a  fixed  part  of  some- 
thing called  the  "  this-me."  But  there  is  no  content 
which,  as  such,  can  belong  to  the  "  mine."  The 
"  mine  "  is  my  existence  taken  as  immediate  fact,  as 
an  integral  whole  of  psychical  elements  which  simply 
are.  It  is  my  content,  so  far  as  not  freed  from  the 
feeling  moment.  And  it  is  merely  my  content, 
because  it  is  not  subordinate  to  this  or  that  ideal 
whole.      If  I  regard  a  mental  fact,  say,  from  the  side 

'  Or  again,  having  no  clear  ideas,  we  may  try  to  help  ourselves 
with  such  phrases  as  "  the  individuality  of  the  individual." 


238 


REALITY. 


of  its  morality,  then  whatever  is,  here  and  now,  not 
relevant  to  this  purpose,  becomes  bare  existence. 
It  is  something  which  is  not  the  appearance  of  the 
ideal  matter  in  hand.  And  yet,  because  it  exists 
somehow,  it  exists  as  a  fact  in  the  mere  •'  mine." 
The  same  thing  happens  also,  of  course,  with 
aesthetics,  or  science,  or  religion.  The  same  detail 
which,  in  one  respect,  was  essential  and  necessary, 
may.  from  another  point  of  view,  become  immaterial. 
And  then  at  once,  so  far,  it  falls  back  into  the 
merely  felt  or  given.  It  exists,  but,  for  the  end  we 
are  regarding,  it  is  nothing. 

This  is  still  more  evident,  perhaps,  from  the  side 
of  psychology.  No  particle  of  my  existence,  on 
the  one  hand,  falls  outside  that  science  ;  and  yet, 
on  the  other  hand,  for  psychology  the  mere  "  mine" 
remains.  When  I  study  my  events  so  as  to  trace  a 
particular  connection,  no  matter  of  what  kind,  then 
at  any  moment  the  psychical  "given"  contains 
features  which  are  irrelevant.  They  have  no  bear- 
ing on  the  point  which  I  am  endeavouring  to  make 
good.  Hence  the  fact  of  their  co-existence  is  con- 
tingent, and  it  is  by  chance  that  they  accompany 
what  is  essential.  They  exist,  in  other  words,  for 
my  present  aim.  in  that  self  which  is  merely  given, 
and  which  is  not  transcended.  On  the  other 
hand,  obviously,  these  same  particulars  are  essential 
and  necessary,  since  (at  the  least)  somehow  they 
are  links  in  the  causal  sequence  of  my  history. 
Every  particular  in  the  same  way  has  some  end 
beyond  the  moment  Each  can  be  referred  to 
an  ideal  whole  whose  appearance  it  is ;  and  nothing 
whatever  is  left  to  belong  merely  to  the  "  this- 
mine,"  The  simplest  observation  of  what  coexists 
removes  it  from  that  region,  and,  chance  has  no 
positive  content,  except  in  relation  to  our  failure 
and  ignorance. 

And  any  psychology,  which  is  not  blind  or  else 
biassed  by  false  doctrine,  forces  on  our  notice  this 


THE    Tins    AND   TirE    MINE. 


'39 


alienation  of  content.     Our  whole  mental  life  moves 
by  a  transcendence  of  tiie  "  this,"  by  sheer  disregard 
of  its  claim  to  possess  any  property.     The  looseness 
of  some  feature  of  the  "  what  "  from  its  fusion  with 
the  "that" — its  self-reference  to,  and  its  operation 
on,  something  beyond — if  you   leave  out   this,  you 
have    lost    the    mainspring  of  psychical  movement. 
But  this  is  the  ideality  of  the  given,  its  non-possession 
of  that  character  with  which  it  appears,  but  which 
only  appears  in  it.    And  Association — who  could  use 
it  as  mere  co-e.\istence  within  the  "this"  .''     But,  if 
anything  more,  it  is  at  once  the  union  of  the  ideal, 
the    synthesis  of   the    eternal.     Thus    the   "  mine " 
has  no  detail  which  is  not  the  property  of  connections 
beyond.    The  merest  coincidence,  when  you  observe 
it,    is  a  distinction    which  couples   universal    ideas. 
And,   in  brief,   the  "mine"    has  no  content  e.xcept 
that   which  is    left   there    by    our   impotence.       Its 
character  in  this  respect  is,  in  other  words,  merely 
negative. 

Hence  to  urge  such  a  character  against  our 
Absolute  would  be  unmeaning.  It  would  be  to  turn 
our  ignorance  of  system  into  a  positive  objection,  to 
make  our  failure  a  ground  for  the  denial  of  possi- 
bility. We  have  no  basis  on  which  to  doubt  that  all 
content  comes  together  harmoniously  in  the  Absolute. 
We  have  no  reason  to  think  that  any  feature  adheres 
to  the  "  this,"  and  is  unable  to  transcend  it.  What 
is  true  is  that,  for  us,  the  incomplete  diversity  of 
various  sy.stems,  the  perplexing  references  of  each 
same  feature  to  many  ideal  wholes,  and  again  that 
jiosilive  special  feeling,  which  we  have  dealt  with 
above — all  this  detail  is  not  made  one  in  any  way 
which  we  can  verify.  Tliat  it  all  is  reconciled  we 
know,  but  how,  in  particular,  is  hid  from  us.  But 
because  this  result  must  be,  and  because  there  is 
nothing  against  it,  we  believe  that  it  is. 


We  have  seen  that  in  the  "  this,"  on  one  side,  there 


240 


REALITY. 


is  no  element  but  content,  and  we  have  found  that 
no  content,  on  the  other  side,  is  the  possession  of 
the  "this."  Tliere  is  none  that  sticks  within  its 
precincts,  but  all  tends  to  refer  itself  beyond.  What 
remains  there  is  chance,  if  chance  is  used  in  the  sense 
of  our  sheer  ignorance.  It  is  not  opposition,  but 
blank  failure  in  regard  to  the  claim  of  an  idea.'  And 
opposition  and  exclusiveness,  in  any  sense,  must 
transcend  the  bare  "  this."  For  their  essence 
always  implies  relation  to  a  something  beyond  self; 
and  that  relation  makes  an  end  of  all  attempt  at 
solid  singleness.  Thus,  if  chance  is  taken  as  involv- 
ing an  actual  relation  to  an  idea,  the  "  this  "  already 
has,  so  far,  transcended  itself  The  refusal  of  some- 
thing given  to  connect  itself  with  an  idea  is  a 
positive  fact.  But  that  refusal,  as  a  relation,  is 
evidently  not  included  and  contained  in  the  "  this." 
On  the  other  hand,  entering  into  that  relation,  the 
internal  content  has,  so  far,  set  itself  free.  It  has 
already  transcended  the  "  this  "  and  become  univer- 
sal. And  the  exclusiveness  of  the  "  this  "  every- 
where in  the  same  way  proves  self-contradictory. 

And  we  had  agreed  before  that  the  mere  "this" 
in  a  sense  is  positive.  It  has  a  felt  self-affirmation 
peculiar  and  especial,  and  into  the  nature  of  that 
positive  being  we  entered  at  length.  But  we  found 
no  reason  why  such  feelings,  considered  in  any 
feature  or  aspect,  should  persist  self-centred  and 
aloof  It  seemed  possible,  to  say  tJie  least,  that 
they  all  might  blend  with  one  another,  and  be 
merged  in  the  experience  of  the  one  Reality.  And 
with  that  possibility,  given  on  all  sides,  we  arrive  at 
our  conclusion.  The  "  this"  and  "mine"  are  now 
absorbed  as  elements  within  our  Absolute.  For 
their  resolution  must  be,  and  it  may  be,  and  so 
certainly  it  is. 

'  Chance,  in  this  sense  of  mere  unperceived  failure  and  pri- 
vation, can  hardly,  except  by  a  licence,  be  called  chance.  It  can- 
nol,  at  all  events,  be  taken  as  qualifying  the  "this." 


CHAPTER   XX. 


RECAPITULA  TION. 


It  may  be  well  at  this  point  perhaps  to  look  back  on 
the  ground  which  we  have  traversed.  In  our  First 
Book  we  examined  some  ways  of  regarding  reality, 
and  we  found  that  each  of  them  contained  fatal 
inconsistency,  Upon  this  we  forthwith  denied  that, 
as  such,  they  could  be  real.  But  upon  reflection  we 
perceived  that  our  denial  must  rest  upon  positive 
knowledge.  It  can  only  be  because  we  know,  that 
we  venture  to  condemn.  Reality  therefore,  we  are 
sure,  has  a  positive  character,  which  rejects  mere 
appearance  and  is  incompatible  with  discord.  On 
the  other  hand  it  cannot  be  a  something  apart,  a 
position  qualified  in  no  way  save  as  negative  of 
phenomena.  For  that  leaves  phenomena  still  contra- 
dictory, while  it  contains  in  its  essence  the  contradic- 
tion of  a  something  which  actually  is  nothing.  The 
Reality,  therefore,  must  be  One,  not  as  excluding 
diversity,  but  as  somehow  including  it  in  such  a  way 
as  to  transform  its  character.  There  is  plainly  not 
anything  which  can  fall  outside  of  the  Real.  That 
must  be  qualified  by  every  part  of  every  predicate 
which  it  rejects  ;  but  it  has  such  qualities  as  counter- 
balance one  another's  defects.  It  has  a  super- 
abundance in  which  all  partial  discrepancies  are  re- 
solved and  remain  as  hijjher  concord. 

And  we  found  that  this  Absolute  is  experience, 
because  that  is  really  what  we  mean  when  we  pre- 
dicate or  speak  of  anything.  It  is  not  one-sided 
experience,  as  mere  volition  or  mere  thought ;  but  it 

A.  K.  »*'  R 


242 


REALITY. 


is  a  whole  superior  to  and  embracing  all  incomplete 
forms  of  life.  This  whole  must  be  immediate  like 
feeling,  but  not,  like  feeling,  immediate  at  a  level 
below  distinction  and  relation.  The  Absolute  is 
immediate  as  holding  and  transcending  these  difier- 

\ences.  And  because  it  cannot  contradict  itself,  and 
does  not  suffer  a  division  of  idea  from  e.xistence,  it 
has  therefore  a  balance  of  pleasure  over  pain.  In 
every  sense  it  is  perfect. 

Then  we  went  on  to  enquire  if  various  forms  of 
the  finite  would  take  a  place  within  this  Absolute. 
We  insisted  that  nothing  can  be  lost,  and  yet  that 
everything  must  be  made  good,  so  as  to  minister  to 
harmony.  And  we  laid  stress  on  the  fact  that  the 
how  was  inexplicable.  To  perceive  the  solution  in 
detail  is  not  possible  for  our  knowledge.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  we  urged  that  such  an  e-xplanation 
is  not  necessary.  We  have  a  general  principle 
which  seems  certain.  The  only  question  is  whether 
any  form  of  the  finite  is  a  negative  instance  which 
serves  to  overthrow  this  principle.  Is  there  any- 
thing which  tends  to  show  that  our  Absolute  is  not 
possible  ?     And,  so  far  as  we  have  gone,  we  have 

I  discovered  as  yet  nothing.  We  have  at  present 
not  any  right  to  a  doubt  about  the  Absolute.     We 

,  have  got  no  shred  of  reason  for  denying  that  it  is 
possible.  But,  if  it  is  possible,  that  is  all  we  need 
seek  for.  For  already  we  have  a  principle  upon 
which  it  is  necessary  ;  and  therefore  it  is  certain. 

In  the  following  chapters  I  shall  still  pursue  the 
same  line  of  argument.  I  shall  enquire  if  there  is 
anything  which  declines  to  take  its  place  within  the 
system  of  our  universe.  And,  if  there  is  nothing 
that  is  found  to  stand  out  and  to  conflict,  or  to  im- 
port discord  when  admitted,  our  conclusion  will  be 
attained.  But  I  will  first  add  a  few  remarks  on  the 
ideas  of  Individuality  and  Perfection. 

We    have   seen    that   these   characters   imply   a 


RECAPITULATION. 


243 


negation  of  the  discordant  and  discrepant,  and  a 
doubt,  pcrliaps,  may  have  arisen  about  their  positive 
aspect.  Are  they  positive  at  all  ?  Wiien  we  pre- 
dicate them,  do  we  assert  or  do  we  only  deny  .-*  Can 
it  be  maintained  that  tliese  ideas  are  negative  simply  ? 
It  might  be  urged  against  us  that  reality  means 
barely  non-appearance,  and  that  unity  is  the  naked 
denial  of  plurality.  And  in  the  same  way  individu- 
ality might  be  taken  as  the  barren  absence  of  discord 
and  of  dissipation.  Perfection,  again,  would  but 
deny  that  we  are  compelled  to  go  further,  or  might 
signify  merely  the  failure  of  unrest  and  of  pain. 
Such  a  doubt  has  received,  I  think,  a  solution  be- 
forehand, but  I  will  point  out  once  more  its  cardinal 
mistake. 

In  the  first  place  a  mere  negation  is  unmean- 
ing (p.  138).  To  deny,  except  from  a  basis  of  posit- 
ive assumption,  is  quite  impossible.  And  a  bare 
negative  idea,  if  we  could  have  it,  would  be  a  relation 
without  a  term.  Hence  some  positive  basis  must 
underlie  these  negations  which  we  have  mentioned. 
And,  in  the  second  place,  we  must  remember  that 
what  is  denied  is,  none  the  less,  somehow  (jredicated 
of  our  Absolute.  It  i.s  indeed  because  of  this  that  we 
have  called  it  individual  and  perfect. 

I.  It  is,  first,  plain  that  at  least  the  idea  of  affir- 
mative being  supports  the  denial  of  discrepancy 
and  unrest.  Being,  if  we  use  the  term  in  a  re- 
stricted sense,  is  not  positively  definable.  It  will  be 
the  same  as  the  most  general  sense  of  experience. 
It  is  different  from  reality,  if  that,  again,  is  strictly 
used.  Reality  (proper)  implies  a  foregone  distinc- 
tion of  content  from  existence,  a  separation  which 
is  overcome.  Being  (proper),  on  the  other  hand, 
is  immediate,  and  at  a  level  below  distinctions ' ; 
though   I   have  not  thought  it  necessary  always  to 


/ 


'  Compare  here  p.  225,  and  for  the  stricter  meaning  of  some 
other  plirases  see  p.  317. 


244 


REALITV. 


employ  these  terms  in  a  confined  meaning.  How- 
ever, in  its  general  sense  of  experience,  being  under- 
lies the  ideas  of  individuality  and  perfection.  And 
these,  at  least  so  far,  must  be  positive. 

2.  And,  in  the  second  place,  each  of  them  is 
positively  determined  by  what  it  excludes.  The 
aspect  of  diversity  belongs  to  the  essence  of  the  in- 
dividual, and  is  affirmatively  contained  in  it.  The 
unity  excludes  what  is  diverse,  so  far  only  as  that 
attempts  to  be  anything  by  itself,  and  to  maintain 
isolation.  And  the  individual  is  the  return  of  this 
apparent  opposite  with  all  its  wealth  into  a  richer 
whole.  How  in  detail  this  is  accomplished  I  repeat 
that  we  do  not  know  ;  but  we  are  capable,  notwith- 
standing, of  forming  the  idea  of  such  a  positive  union 
[{Chapters  xiv.  and  xxvii.).  Feeling  supplies  us 
with  a  low  and  imperfect  example  of  an  immediate 
whole.  And,  taking  this  together  with  the  idea  of 
qualification  by  the  rejected,  and  together  with  the 
idea  of  unknown  qualities  which  come  in  to  help — 
we  arrive  at  individuality.  And,  though  depending 
on  negation,  such  a  synthesis  is  positive. 

And,  in  a  different  way,  the  same  account  is  valid 
of  the  Perfect.  That  does  not  mean  a  being  which, 
in  regard  to  unrest  and  painful  struggle,  is  a  simple 
blank.  It  means  the  identity  of  idea  and  existence, 
attended  also  by  pleasure.  Now,  so  far  as  pleasure 
goes,  that  certainly  is  not  negative.  But  pleasure  is 
far  from  being  the  only  positive  element  in  perfec- 
tion. The  unrest  and  striving,  the  opposition  of  fact 
to  idea,  and  the  movement  towards  an  end — these 
features  are  not  left  outside  of  that  Whole  which  is 
consummate.  For  all  the  content,  which  the  struggle 
has  generated,  is  brought  home  and  is  laid  to  rest  un- 
diminished in  the  perfect.  The  idea  of  a  being  quali- 
fied somehow,  without  any  alienation  of  its  "what" 
from  its  "that" — a  being  at  the  same  time  fully 
possessed  of  all  hostile  distinctions,  and  the  richer 
for  their  strife — this  is  a  positive  idea.     And  it  can 


RECAPITULATION. 


245 


be  realised  in  its  outline,   though   certainly  not  in 
detail. 


I  will  advert  in  conclusion  to  an  objection  drawn 
from  a  common  mistake.  Quantity  is  often  intro- 
duced into  the  idea  of  perfection.  For  the  perfect 
seems  to  be  that  beyond  which  we  cannot  ^o,  and  this 
tends  naturally  to  take  the  form  of  an  infinite  num- 
ber. But,  since  any  real  number  must  be  finite, 
we  are  at  once  involved  here  in  a  hopeless  contra- 
diction. And  I  think  it  necessary  to  say  no  more 
on  this  evident  illusion  ;  but  will  pass  on  to  the 
objection  which  may  be  urged  against  our  view  of 
the  perfect.  If  the  perfect  is  the  concordant,  then 
no  growth  of  its  area  or  increase  of  its  pleasantness 
could  make  it  more  complete.  We  thus,  apparently, 
might  have  the  smallest  being  as  perfect  as  the 
largest  ;  and  this  seems  paradoxical.  But  tlie  para- 
dox really,  I  should  say,  exists  only  through  mis- 
understanding. For  we  are  accustomed  to  beings 
whose  nature  is  always  and  essentially  defective. 
And  so  we  suppose  in  our  smaller  perfect  a  condition 
of  want,  or  at  least  of  defect  ;  and  this  condition  is 
diminished  by  alteration  in  quantity.  But,  where  a 
being  is  really  perfect,  our  supposition  would  be 
absurd.  Or,  again,  we  imagine  first  a  creature  com- 
plete in  itself,  and  by  the  side  of  it  we  place  a  larger 
completion.  Then  unconsciously  we  take  the  greater 
to  be,  in  some  way,  apprehended  by  the  smaller  ; 
and,  with  this,  naturally  the  lesser  being  becomes  by 
contrast  defective.  But  what  we  fail  to  observe  is 
that  such  a  being  can  no  longer  be  perfect.  For  an 
idea,  which  is  not  fact,  has  been  placed  by  us  within 
it ;  and  that  idea  at  once  involves  a  collision  of  ele- 
ments, and  by  consequence  also  a  loss  of  perfection. 
And  thus  a  paradox  has  been  made  by  our  misun- 
derstanding. We  assumed  completion,  and  then 
surreptitiously  added  a  condition  which  destroyed  it. 
And  this,  so  far,  was  a  mere  error. 


246  REALITY. 

But  the  error  may  direct  our  attention  to  a  truth. 
It  leads  us  to  ask  if  two  perfections,  great  and  small, 
can  possibly  exist  side  by  side.  And  we  must 
answer  in  the  negative.  If  we  take  perfection  in  its 
full  sense,  we  cannot  suppose  two  such  perfect  exist- 
ences. And  this  is  not  because  one  surpasses  the 
other  in  size  ;  for  that  is  wholly  irrelevant.  It  is 
because  finite  existence  and  perfection  are  incom- 
patible. A  being,  short  of  the  Whole,  but  existing 
within  it,  is  essentially  related  to  that  which  is  not- 
itself.  Its  inmost  being  is,  and  must  be,  infected 
by  the  external.  Within  its  content  there  are  rela- 
tions which  do  not  terminate  inside.  And  it  is  clear 
at  once  that,  in  such  a  case,  the  ideal  and  the  real 
can  never  be  at  one.  But  their  disunion  is  precisely 
what  we  mean  by  imperfection.  And  thus  incom- 
pleteness, and  unrest,  and  unsatisfied  ideality,  are 
the  lot  of  the  finite.  There  is  nothing  which,  to 
•speak  properly,  is  individual  or  perfect,  except  only 
ithe  Absolute. 


CHAPTER   XXI. 


SOLIPSISM. 


In  our  First  Book  we  examined  various  ways  of 
taking  facts,  and  we  found  that  they  all  gave  no  more 
than  appearance.  In  the  present  Book  we  have 
been  engaged  with  the  nature  of  Reality.  We  have 
been  attempting,  so  far,  to  form  a  general  idea  of  its 
character,  and  to  defend  it  against  more  or  less 
plausible  objections.  Through  the  remainder  of  our 
work  we  must  pursue  the  same  task.  We  must 
endeavour  to  perceive  how  the  main  aspects  of  the 
world  are  all  able  to  take  a  place  within  our  Absolute. 
And,  if  we  find  that  none  refuses  to  accept  a  posi- 
tion there,  we  may  consider  our  result  secure  against 
attack.  I  will  now  enter  on  the  question  which 
gives  its  title  to  this  chapter. 

Have  we  any  reason  to  believe  in  the  existence  of  \ 
anything  beyond  our  private  selves  ?  Have  we  the 
smallest  right  to  such  a  belief,  and  is  it  more  than 
literally  a  self-delusion  .•*  We,  I  think,  may  fairly 
say  that  some  metaphysicians  have  shown  unwilling- 
ness to  look  this  problem  in  the  face.  And  yet  it 
cannot  be  avoided.  Since  we  all  believe  in  a  world 
beyond  us,  and  are  not  prepared  to  give  this  up,  it 
would  be  a  scandal  if  that  were  something  which 
upon  our  theory  was  illusive.  Any  view  which  will 
not  explain,  and  also  justify,  an  attitude  essential  to 
human  nature,  must  surely  be  condemned.  But  we 
shall  soon  see,  upon  the  other  hand,  how  the  supposed 
difficulties  of  the  question  have  been  created  by  false 


248 


REALITY. 


doctrine.  Upon  our  general  theory  they  lose  their 
foundation  and  vanish. 

The  argument  in  favour  of  Solipsism,  put  most 
simply,  is  as  follows.  "  1  cannot  transcend  experi- 
ence, and  experience  must  be  my  experience.  From 
this  it  follows  that  nothing  beyond  my  self  exists  ; 
for  what  is  experience  is  its  states." 

The  argument  derives  its  strength,  in  part,  from 
false  theory,  but  to  a  greater  extent  perhaps,  from 
thoughtless  obscurity.  I  will  begin  by  pointing  out 
the  ambiguity  which  lends  some  colour  to  this  appeal 
to  experience.  Experience  may  mean  experience 
only  direct,  or  indirect  also.  Direct  experience  I 
understand  to  be  confined  to  the  given  simply,  to 
the  merely  felt  or  presented.  But  indirect  experi- 
ence includes  all  fact  that  is  constructed  from  the 
basis  of  the  "  this  "  and  the  "  mine."  It  is  all  that 
is  taken  to  exist  beyond  the  bare  moment.  This  is 
a  distinction  the  fatal  result  of  which  Solipsism  has 
hardly  realized  ;  for  upon  neiiker  interpretation  of 
experience  can  its  argument  be  defended. 

I.  Let  us  first  suppose  that  the  experience,  to  which 
it  appeals,  is  direct.  Then,  we  saw  in  our  ninth 
chapter,  the  mere  "given"  fails  doubly  to  support  that 
appeal.  It  supplies,  on  the  one  hand,  not  enough, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  too  much.  It  offers  us 
a  not-self  with  the  self,  and  so  ruins  Solipsism  by 
that  excess.  But,  upon  the  other  side,  it  does  not 
supply  us  with  any  self  at  all,  if  we  mean  by  self  a 
substantive  the  possessor  of  an  object,  or  even  its  own 
states.  And  Solipsism  is,  on  this  side,  destroyed  by 
defect.  But,  before  I  develope  this,  I  will  state  an 
objection  which  by  itself  might  suffice. 

My  self,  as  an  existence  to  which  phenomena 
belong  as  its  adjectives,  is  supposed  to  be  given  by 
a  direct  experience.  But  this  gift  plainly  is  an  illu- 
sion. Such  an  experience  can  supply  us  with  no 
reality  beyond  that  of  the  moment  There  is  no 
faculty  which  can  deliver  the  immediate  revelation 


SOLIPSISM, 


249 


of  a  self  beyond  the  present  (Chapter  x.).  And  so, 
if  Solipsism  finds  its  one  real  thing  in  experience, 
that  thing  is  confined  to  the  limits  of  the  mere  "  this." 
But  with  such  a  reflection  we  have  already,  so  far, 
destroyed  Solipsism  as  positive,  and  as  anything 
more  than  a  sufficient  reason  for  total  scepticism. 
Let  us  pass  from  this  objection  to  other  points. 

Direct  experience  is  unable  to  transcend  the  mere 
"this."  But  even  in  what  that  gives  we  are,  even 
so  far,  not  supplied  with  the  self  upon  which  Solip- 
sism is  founded.  We  have  always  instead  either  too 
much  or  too  little.  For  the  distinction  and  separa- 
tion of  subject  and  object  is  not  original  at  all,  and 
is,  in  that  sense,  not  a  datum.  And  hence  the  self 
cannot,  without  qualification,  be  said  to  be  given 
{ibid.).  I  will  but  mention  this  point, and  will  goon 
to  another.  Whatever  we  may  think  generally  of 
our  original  mode  of  feeling,  we  have  now  verifiably 
some  states  in  which  there  is  no  reference  to  a  sub- 
ject at  all  {ibid.).  And  if  such  feelings  are  the  mere 
adjectives  of  a  subject- reality,  that  character  must 
be  inferred,  and  is  certainly  not  given.  But  it  is  not 
necessary  to  take  our  stand  on  this  disputable 
ground.  Let  us  admit  that  the  distinction  of  object 
and  subject  is  directly  presented — and  we  have  still 
hardly  made  a  step  in  the  direction  of  Solipsism. 
For  the  subject  and  the  object  will  now  appear  in 
correlation  ;  they  will  be  either  two  aspects  of  one 
fact,  or  (if  you  prefer  it)  two  things  with  a  relation 
between  them.  And  it  hardly  follows  straight  from 
this  than  only  one  of  these  two  things  is  real,  and  that 
all  the  rest  of  the  given  total  is  merely  its  attribute. 
I'hat  is  the  result  of  reflection  and  of  inference,  a 
process  which  first  sets  up  one  half  of  the  fact  as 
absolute,  and  then  turns  the  other  half  into  an  adjec- 
tive of  this  fragment.  And  whether  the  half  is 
object  or  is  subject,  and  whether  we  are  led  to 
Materialism. or  to  what  is  called  sometimes"  Idealism," 
the  process  essentially  is  the  same.     It  equally  con- 


250 


REALITY. 


sists.  in  each  case,  in  a  vicious  inference.  And  the 
result  is  emphatically  not  something  which  experience 
presents.  I  will,  in  conclusion,  perhaps  needlessly, 
remark  on  another  point.  We  found  (Chapter  ix.) 
that  there  prevailed  great  confusion  as  to  the  boun- 
daries of  self  and  not-self  There  seemed  to  be 
features  not  exclusively  assignable  to  either.  And, 
if  this  is  so,  surely  that  is  one  more  reason  for  reject- 
ing an  experience  such  as  Solipsism  would  suppose. 
If  the  self  is  given  as  a  reality,  with  all  else  as  its 
adjectives,  we  can  hardly  then  account  for  the  super- 
vening uncertainty  about  its  limits,  and  explain  our 
constant  hesitation  between  too  little  and  too 
much. 

What  we  have  seen  so  far  is  briefly  this.  We 
have  no  direct  experience  of  reality  as  my  self  with 
its  states.  If  we  are  to  arrive  at  that  conclusion, 
we  must  do  so  indirectly  and  through  a  process  of 
inference.  Experience  gives  the  "  this-mine."  It 
gives  neither  the  "mine"  as  an  adjective  of  the 
"  this,"  nor  the  "  this  "  as  dependent  on  and  belong- 
ing to  the  "mine."  Even  if  it  did  so  for  the  moment, 
that  would  still  not  be  enough  as  a  support  for  Solip- 
sism. But  experience  supplies  the  character  re- 
quired, not  even  as  existing  within  one  presentation, 
and,  if  not  thus,  then  much  less  so  as  existing 
beyond.  And  the  position,  in  which  we  now  stand, 
may  be  stated  as  follows.  If  Solipsism  is  to  be 
proved,  it  must  transcend  direct  experience.  Let  us 
then  ask,  (a)  first,  if  transcendence  of  this  kind  is 
possible,  and,  [b)  next,  if  it  is  able  to  give  assistance 
to  Solipsism.  The  conclusion,  which  we  shall  reach, 
may  be  stated  at  once.  It  is  both  possible  and 
necessary  to  transcend  what  is  given.  But  this  same 
transcendence  at  once  carries  us  into  the  universe  at 
large.  Our  private  self  is  not  a  resting-place  which 
logic  can  justify. 

II.  (a)  We  are  to  enquire,  first,  if  it  is  possible 


SOLIPSISM. 


25r 


to   remain   within    the   limits  of   direct  experience. 


N( 


lid  not  be 


to 


("hat 


It  woiil 

to  US  immediately.  It  would  be  hard  to  show  what  is 
?ioi  imported  into  the  "this,"  or,  at  least,  modified 
there  by  transcendence.  To  fix  with  regard  to  the 
past  the  precise  limit  of  presentation,  might  at  times 
be  very  difficult.  And  to  discount  within  the 
present  the  result  of  ideal  processes  would,  at  least 
often,  be  impossible.  But  I  do  not  desire  to  base 
any  objection  on  this  ground.  I  am  content  here  to 
admit  the  distinction  between  direct  and  indirect 
experience.  And  the  question  is  whether  reality 
can  go  beyond  the  former,''  Has  a  man  a  right  to 
say  that  something  exists,  beside  that  which  at  this 
moment  he  actually  feels.''  And  is  it  possible, 
on  the  other  side,  to  identify  reality  with  the  im- 
mediate present  .■* 

This  identification,  we  have  seen,  is  impossible ; 
and  the  attempt  to  remain  within  the  boundary 
of  the  mere  "  this "  is  hopeless.  The  self-dis- 
crepancy of  the  content,  and  its  continuity  with  a 
"  what  "  beyond  its  own  limits,  at  once  settle  the 
question.  We  need  not  fall  back  for  conviction 
upon  the  hard  shock  of  change.  The  whole  move- 
ment of  the  mind  implies  disengagement  from  the 
mere  "  this  "  ;  and  to  assert  the  content  of  the  latter 
as  reality  at  once  involves  us  in  contradictions.  But 
it  would  not  be  profitable  further  to  dwell  on  this 
point.  To  remain  within  the  presented  is  neither 
defensible  nor  possible.  We  are  compelled  alike  by 
necessity  and  by  logic  to  transcend  it  (Chapters  xv. 
and  xix). 

But,  before  proceeding  to  ask  whither  this  tran- 
scendence must  take  us,  I  will  deal  with  a  question 
we  noticed  before  (Chapter  xix.).  An  objection  may 
be  based  on  the  uniqueness  of  the  felt ;  and  it  may 
be  urged  that  the  reality,  which  appears  in  the  "  this- 
mine"  is  unique  and  exclusive.  Whatever,  therefore, 
its  predicates  may  seem  to  demand,  it  is  not  possible 


252 


REALITY. 


to  extend  the  boundaries  of  the  subject.  That  will, 
in  short,  stick  hopelessly  for  ever  within  the  confines 
of  the  presented.      Let  us  examine  this  contention. 

It  will  be  more  convenient,  in  the  first  place,  to 
dismiss  the  word  "  unique."  For  that  seems  (as  we 
saw)  to  introduce  the  idea  of  existence  in  a  series, 
together  with  a  negative  relation  towards  other 
elements.  And,  if  such  a  relation  is  placed  within 
the  essence  of  the  "  this,"  then  the  "this"  has  be- 
come part  of  a  larger  unity. 

The  objection  may  be  stated  better  thus.'  "  All 
reality  must  fall  within  the  limits  of  the  given.  For, 
however  much  the  content  may  desire  to  go  beyond, 
yet,  when  you  come  to  make  that  content  a  predicate 
of  the  real,  you  are  forced  back  to  the  '  this-mine,' 
or  the  'now-felt,'  for  your  subject.  Reality  appears 
to  lie  solely  in  what  is  presented,  and  seems  not  dis- 
coverable elsewhere.  But  the  presented,  on  the 
other  hand,  must  be  the  felt  'this.'  And  other 
cases  of  'this,'  if  you  mean  to  take  them  as  real, 
seem  also  to  fall  within  the  '  now-mine.'  If  they 
are  not  indirect  predicates  of  that,  and  so  extend  it 
adjectivally,  then  they  directly  will  fall  within  its 
datum.  But,  if  so,  they  themselves  become  distinc- 
tions and  features  there.  Hence  we  have  the  '  this- 
mine  '  as  before,  but  with  an  increase  of  special 
internal  particulars.  And  so  we  still  remain  within 
the  confines  of  one  presentation,  and  to  have  two  at 
once  seems  impossible." 

Now  in  answer,  I  admit  that,  to  find  reality,  we 
must  betake  ourselves  to  feeling.  It  is  the  real, 
which  there  appears,  which  is  the  subject  of  all  pre- 
dicates. And  to  make  our  way  to  another  fact, 
quite  outside  of  and  away  from  the  "  this"  which  is 
"  mine,"  seems  out  of  the  question.  But,  while 
admitting  so  much,  I  reject  the  further  consequence. 
I  deny  that  the  felt  reality  is  shut  up  and  confined 

'  On  this  whole  matter  compare  my  PrincipUs  of  Logic, 
Chapter  ii. 


SOLIPSISM. 


253 


within  my  feeling.  For  the  latter  may,  by  addition, 
be  extended  beyond  its  own  proper  hmits.  It  may 
remain  positively  itself.and  yet  be  absorbed  in  what  is 
larger.  Just  as  in  change  we  have  a  "  now,"  which 
contains  also  a  "then";  just  as,  again,  in  what  is 
mine  there  may  be  diverse  features,  so,  from  the 
opposite  side,  it  may  be  with  my  direct  experience. 
There  is  no  opposition  between  that  and  a  wider 
whole  of  presentation.  The  "  mine  "  does  not  ex- 
clude inclusion  in  a  fuller  totality.  There  may  be  a 
further  experience  immediate  and  direct,  something 
that  is  my  private  feeling,  and  also  much  more. 
Now  the  Reality,  to  which  all  content  in  the  end 
must  belong,  is,  we  have  seen,  a  direct  all-embracing 
experience.  This  Reality  is  present  in,  and  is  my 
feeling ;  and  hence,  to  that  extent,  what  I  feel  ts  the 
all-inclusive  universe.  But,  when  I  go  on  to  deny 
that  this  universe  is  more,  I  turn  truth  into  error. 
There  is  a  "more  "  of  feeling,  the  extension  of  that 
which  is  "  now  mine  " ;  and  this  whole  is  both  the 
assertion  and  negation  oi  my  "this."  That  extension 
maintains  it  together  with  additions,  which  merge 
and  override  it  as  exclusive.  My  "  mine  "  becomes 
a  feature  in  the  great  "mine,"  which  includes  all 
"  mines." 

Now,  if  within  the  "this"  there  were  found  any- 
thing which  could  stand  out  against  absorption — 
anything  which  could  refuse  to  be  so  lost  by  such 
support  and  maintenance — an  objection  might  be 
tenable.  But  we  saw,  in  our  nineteenth  chapter, 
that  a  character  of  this  kind  does  not  exist.  My  in- 
capacity to  extend  the  boundary  of  my  "  this,"  my 
inability  to  gain  an  immediate  experience  of  that 
in  which  it  is  subordinated  and  reduced — is  my  mere 
imperfection.  Because  I  cannot  spread  out  my 
window  until  all  is  transparent,  and  all  windows  dis- 
appear, this  does  not  justify  me  in  insisting  on  my 
window- frame's  rigidity.  For  that  frame  has,  as 
such,  no  existence  in  reality,  but  only  in  our  impo- 


254 


REALITY. 


tence  (Chapter  xix.).  I  am  aware  of  the  miserable 
inaccuracy  of  the  metaphor,  and  of  the  thoujjhtless 
objection  which  it  may  call  up ;  but  I  will  still 
put  the  matter  so.  The  one  Reality  is  what  comes 
directly  to  my  feeling  through  this  window  of  a 
moment ;  and  this,  also  and  again,  is  the  only 
Reality.  But  we  must  not  turn  the  first  "  is  "  into 
"  is  nothing  at  all  but,"  and  the  second  "  is  "  into  "is 
all  of."  There  is  no  objection  against  the  disappear- 
ance of  limited  transparencies  in  an  all-embracing 
clearness.  We  are  not  compelled  merely,  but  we 
are  justified,  when  we  follow  the  irresistible  lead  of 
our  content. 


(d)  We  have  seen,  so  far,  that  experience,  if  you 
take  that  as  direct,  does  not  testify  to  the  sole  reality 
of  my  self  Direct  experience  would  be  confined  to 
a  "this,"  which  is  not  even  pre-eminently  a  "  mine," 
and  still  less  is  the  same  as  what  we  mean  by  a 
"self"  And,  in  the  second  place,  we  perceived  that 
reality  extends  beyond  such  experience.  And  here, 
once  more,  Solipsism  may  suppose  that  it  finds  its 
opportunity.  It  may  urge  that  the  reality,  which 
goes  beyond  the  moment,  stops  short  at  the  self 
The  process  of  transcendence,  it  may  admit,  con- 
ducts us  to  a  "me  "which  embraces  all  immediate 
experiences.  But,  Solipsism  niay  argue,  this  pro- 
cess can  not  take  us  on  further.  By  this  road, 
it  will  object,  there  is  no  way  to  a  plurality  of  selves, 
or  to  any  reality  beyond  my  private  personality. 
We  shall,  however,  find  that  this  contention  is  both 
dogmatic  and  absurd.  For,  if  you  have  a  right  to 
believe  in  a  self  beyond  the  present,  you  have  the 
same  right  to  maintain  also  the  existence  of  other 
selves. 

I  will  not  enquire  how,  precisely,  we  come  by 
the  idea  of  other  animates'  existence.  Metaphysics 
has  no  direct  interest  in  the  origin  of  ideas,  and  its 
business  is  solely  to  examine  their  claim  to  be  true. 


SOLIPSISM. 


255 


But,  if  I  am  asked  to  justify  my  belief  that  other 
selves,  beside  my  own,  are  in  the  worid,  the  answer 
must  be  this.  I  arrive  at  other  souls  by  means  of 
other  bodies,  and  the  argument  starts  from  the 
ground  of  my  own  body.  My  own  body  is  one  of 
the  groups  which  are  formed  in  my  experience. 
And  it  is  connected,  immediately  and  specially,  with 
pleasure  and  pain,  and  a^jain  with  sensations  and 
volitions,  as  no  other  group  can  be.'  But,  since 
there  are  other  groups  like  my  body,  these  must 
also  be  qualified  by  similar  attendants.^  With  my 
feelings  and  my  volitions  these  groups  cannot 
correspond.  For  they  are  usually  irrelevant  and 
indifferent,  and  often  even  hostile  ;  and  they  enter 
into  collision  with  one  another  and  with  my  body. 
Therefore  these  foreign  bodies  have,  each  of  them, 
a  foreign  self  of  its  own.  This  is  briefly  the  argu- 
ment, and  it  seems  to  me  to  be  practically  valid.  It 
falls  short,  indeed,  of  demonstration  in  the  following 
way.  The  identity  in  the  bodies  is,  in  the  first  place, 
not  exact,  but  in  various  degrees  falls  short  of  com- 
pleteness. And  further,  even  so  far  as  the  identity 
is  perfect,  its  consequence  might  be  modified  by 
additional  conditions.  And  hence  the  other  soul 
might  so  materially  differ  from  my  own.  that  I  should 
hesitate,  perhaps,  to  give  it  the  name  of  soul.'  But 
still  the  argument,  though  not  strict  proof,  seems 
sufficiently  good. 

It  is  by  the  same  kind  of  argument  that  we  reach 
our  own  past  and  future.  And  here  Solipsism,  in 
objecting  to  the  existence  of  other  selves,  is  unawares 
attempting  to  commit  suicide.  For  my  past  self, 
also,  is  arrived  at  only  by  a  process  of  inference,  and 
by  a  process  which  also  itself  is  fallible. 

1  Compare  Mind,  XII.  ,•570  foil.  I  do  not  think  it  is  necessary 
for  present  purposes  to  elaborate  this  argument. 

*  This  step  rests  entirely  on  the  principle  of  the  Identity  ot 
Indiscernibles. 

'  Cf.  ChaiJter  x.xvii. 


256 


REALITY. 


We  are  so  accustomed  each  to  consider  his  past 
self  as  his  own,  that  it  is  worth  while  to  reflect  how 
very  largely  it  may  be  foreign.  My  own  past  is,  in 
the  first  place,  incompatible  with  my  own  present, 
quite  as  much  as  my  present  can  be  with  another 
man's.  Their  difierence  in  time  could  not  permit 
them  both  to  be  wholly  the  same,  even  if  their  two 
characters  are  taken  as  otherwise  identical.  But 
this  agreement  in  character  is  at  least  not  always 
found.  And  my  past  not  only  may  differ  so  as  to 
be  almost  indifferent,  but  1  may  regard  it  even  with 
a  feeling  of  hostility  and  hatred.  It  may  be  mine 
mainly  in  the  sense  of  a  persisting  incumbrance,  a 
compulsory  appendage,  joined  in  continuity  and 
fastened  by  an  inference.  And  that  inference,  not 
being  abstract,  falls  short  of  demonstration. 

My  past  of  yesterday  is  constructed  by  a  redin- 
tegration from  the  present.  Let  us  call  the  present 
A'  {B-C),  with  an  ideal  association  x  [a-b).  The  re- 
production of  this  association,  and  its  synthesis  with 
tlie  present,  so  as  to  form  X  (a-B-C),  is  what  we 
call  memory.  And  the  justification  of  the  process 
consists  in  the  identity  of  j:  with  A'.'  Hut  it  is  a 
serious  step  not  simply  to  qualify  my  present  self, 
but  actually  to  set  up  another  self  at  the  distance  of 
an  interval.  I  so  insist  on  the  identity  that  I  ride 
upon  it  to  a  difference,  just  as,  before,  the  identity  of 
our  bodies  carried  me  to  the  soul  of  a  different  man. 
And  it  is  obvious,  once  more  here,  that  the  identity 
is  incomplete.  The  association  does  not  contain  all 
that  now  qualifies  A' ;  x  is  different  from  A',  and  d  is 
different  from  B.  And  again,  the  passage,  through 
this  defective  identity  to  another  concrete  fact,  may 
to  sonie  extent  be  vitiated  by  unknown  interfering 
conditions.      Hence  I  cannot  prove  that  the  yester- 


•  For  the  sake  of  simplicity  I  have  omitted  the  process  of  cor- 
recting memory.  This  is  of  course  effected  by  the  attempt  to  get 
a  coherent  view  of  the  past,  and  by  the  rejection  of  everything 
which  cannot  be  included. 


SOLIPSISM. 


257 


day's  self,  which  I  construct,  did,  as  such,  have  an 
actual  existence  in  the  past.  The  concrete  condi- 
tions, into  which  my  ideal  construction  must  be 
launched,  may  alter  its  character.  They  may,  in 
fact,  unite  with  it  so  that,  if  I  knew  this  unknown 
fact,  I  should  no  longer  care  to  call  it  my  self.  Thus 
my  past  self,  assuredly,  is  not  demonstrated.  We 
can  but  say  of  it  that,  like  other  selves,  it  is  practic- 
ally certain.  And  in  each  case  the  result,  and  our 
way  to  it,  is  in  principle  the  same.  Both  other 
selves  and  my  own  self  are  intellectual  constructions,-^ 
each  as  secure  as  we  can  expect  special  facts  to  be. 
But,  if  any  one  stands  out  for  demonstration,  then 
neither  is  demonstrated.  And,  if  this  demand  is 
pressed,  you  must  remain  with  a  feeling  about  which 
you  can  say  nothing,  and  which  is,  emphatically, 
not  the  self  of  any  one  at  all.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  you  are  willing  to  accept  a  result  which  is  not 
strictly  proved,  botli  results  must  be  accepted.  For 
the  process,  which  conducts  you  to  other  selves, 
is  not  weaker  sensibly,  if  at  all,  than  the  con- 
struction by  which  your  own  self  is  gained.  On 
either  alternative  the  conclusion  of  Solipsism,  is 
ruined. 

And  if  memory,  or  some  other  faculty,  is  appealed 
to,  and  is  invoked  to  secure  the  pre-eminent  reality  ol 
my  self,  I  must  decline  to  be  persuaded.  For  I  am 
convinced  that  such  convenient  wonders  do  not 
exist,  and  that  no  one  has  any  sufficient  excuse  for 
accepting  them.  Memory  is  plainly  a  construction 
from  the  ground  of  the  present.  It  is  throughout 
inferential,  and  is  certainly  fallible  ;  and  its  gross 
mistakes  as  to  past  personal  existence  should  be  very 
well  known  (pp.  84,  213).  I  prefer,  in  passing,  to 
notice  that  confusion  as  to  the  present  limits  of  self, 
which  is  so  familiar  a  feature  in  hypnotic  experi- 
ments. The  assumption  of  a  suggested  foreign 
jiersonality  is,  I  think,  strong  evidence  for  the 
secondary  nature  of  our  own.     Both,  in  short,  are 

A.  k.  s 


258 


REALITY. 


results  of  manufacture ;  and  to  account  otherwise 
for  the  facts  seems  clearly  impossible.' 

We  have  seen,  so  far,  that  direct  experience  is 
no  foundation  for  Solipsism.  We  have  seen  further 
that,  if  at  all  we  may  transcend  that  experience, 
we  are  no  nearer  Solipsism.  For  we  can  go  to 
foreign  selves  by  a  process  no  worse  than  the 
construction  which  establishes  our  own  self  And, 
before  passing  on,  I  will  call  attention  to  a  minor 
point  Even  if  1  had  secured  a  right  to  the  posses- 
sion of  my  past  self,  and  no  right  to  the  acceptance 
of  other  selves  as  real,  yet,  even  with  this.  Solipsism 
is  not  grounded.  It  would  not  follow  from  this  that 
the  not-myself  is  nothing,  and  that  all  the  world  is 
merely  a  state  of  my  self.  The  only  consequence, 
so  far,  would  be  that  the  not-myself  must  be  in- 
animate. But  between  that  result  and  Solipsism 
is  an  impassable  gulf  You  can  not,  starting  from 
the  given,  construct  a  self  which  will  swallow  up  and 
own  every  element  from  which  it  is  distinguished. 

I  will  briefly  touch  on  another  source  of  mis- 
tmderstanding.  It  is  the  old  mistake  in  a  form 
which  is  slightly  different.  All  I  know,  I  may  be 
told,  is  what  I  experience,  and  I  can  experience 
nothing  beyond  my  own  states.  And  it  is  argued 
that  hence  my  own  self  is  the  one  knowable  reality. 
But  the  truth  in  this  objection,  once  more,  has  been 
jjressed  into  falsehood.  It  is  true  that  all  I  ex- 
perience is  my  state — so  far  as  I  experience  it. 
Even  the  Absolute,  as  my  reality,  is  my  state  of 
mind.  But  this  hardly  shows  that  my  experience 
l)Ossesses  no  other  aspect.  It  hardly  proves  that 
what  is  my  state  of  mind  is  no  more,  and  must  be 
taken  as  real  barely  from  that  one  point  of  view. 

'  It  is  of  course  the  intervention  of  the  foreign  body  which 
prevents  my  usually  confusing  foreign  selves  with  ray  own. 
Another's  body  is,  in  the  first  place,  not  immediately  connected 
throughout  with  my  pleasure  and  pain.  And,  in  the  second 
jilace,  its  states  are  often  positively  incompatible  with  mine. 


SOLIPSISM. 


259 


The  Reality  certainly  must  appear  within  my 
psychical  existence  ;  but  it  is  quite  another  thing  to 
limit  its  whole  nature  to  that  field. 

My  thought,  feeling,  and  will,  are,  of  course,  all 
phenomena ;  they  all  are  events  which  happen. 
From  time  to  time,  as  they  happen,  they  exist  in 
the  felt  "  this,"  and  they  are  elements  within  its 
chance  congeries.  And  they  can  be  taken,  further, 
as  states  of  that  self-thing  which  I  construct  by  an 
inference.  But,  if  you  look  at  them  merely  so,  then, 
unconsciously  or  consciously,  you  mutilate  their 
character.  You  use  a  point  of  view  which  is 
necessary,  but  still  is  partial  and  one-sided.  And 
we  shall  see  more  clearly,  hereafter,  the  nature  of 
this  view  (Chapters  .xxiii.  and  xxvii.).  I  will  here 
simply  state  that  the  import  and  content  of  these 
processes  does  not  consist  in  their  appearance 
in  the  pyschical  series.  In  thought  the  important 
feature  is  not  our  mental  state,  as  such  ;  and  the 
same  truth,  if  less  palpable,  is  as  certain  with  vo- 
lition. My  will  is  mine,  but,  none  the  less,  it  is  also 
much  more.  The  content  of  the  idea  willed  (to 
put  the  matter  only  on  that  ground)  may  be  some- 
thing beyond  me  ;  and,  since  this  content  is  effective, 
the  activity  of  the  process  cannot  simply  be  my 
state.  But  I  will  not  try  to  anticipate  a  point  which 
will  engage  us  later  on.  It  is  sufficient  here  to  lay 
down  generally,  that,  if  experience  is  mine,  that  is 
no  argument  for  what  I  experience  being  nothing 
but  my  state.  And  this  whole  objection  rests 
entirely  on  false  preconceptions.  My  private  self 
is  first  set  up,  as  a  substantive  which  is  real  in- 
dependent of  the  Whole;  and  then  its  palpable 
community  with  the  universe,  which  in  experience 
is  forced  on  us,  is  degraded  into  the  adjective  of 
our  miserable  abstraction.  But,  when  these  pre- 
conceptions are  exposed,  Solipsism  disappears. 

Considered  as  the  apotheosis  of  an  abstraction, 


26o 


REALITY. 


Solipsism  is  quite  false.  But  from  its  errors  we  may 
collect  aspects  of  truth,  to  which  we  sometimes  are 
blind.  And,  in  the  first  place,  though  my  experience 
is  not  the  whole  world,  yet  that  world  appears  in  my 
experience,  and,  so  far  as  it  exists  there,  it  is  my 
[state  of  mind.  That  the  real  Absolute,  or  God 
himself,  is  also  jfiy  state,  is  a  truth  often  forgotten 
and  to  which  later  we  shall  return.  And  there  is 
a  second  truth  to  which  Solipsism  has  blindly  borne 
witness.  My  way  of  contact  with  Reality  is  through 
a  limited  aperture.  For  I  cannot  get  at  it  directly 
except  through  the  felt  "this,"  and  our  immediate 
interchange  and  transfluence  takes  place  through 
one  small  opening.  Everything  beyond,  though  not 
less  real,  is  an  expansion  of  the  common  essence 
which  we  feel  burningly  in  this  one  focus.  And  so, 
in  the  end,  to  know  the  Universe,  we  must  fall  back 
upon  our  personal  experience  and  sensation. 

But  beside  these  two  truths  there  is  yet  another 
truth  worth  noticing.  My  self  is  certainly  not  the 
Absolute,  but,  without  it,  the  Absolute  would  not  be 
itself  You  cannot  anywhere  abstract  wholly  from 
my  personal  feelings  ;  you  cannot  say  that,  apart 
even  from  the  meanest  of  these,  anything  else  in  the 
universe  would  be  what  it  is.  And  in  asserting 
this  relation,  this  essential  connection,  of  all  reality 
with  my  self,  Solipsism  has  emphasized  what  should 
not  be  forgotten.  But  the  consequences,  which 
properly  follow  from  this  truth,  will  be  discussed 
liereafter.' 


'  I  shall  deal  in  Chapter  xxvii.  with  the  question  whether, 
in  refuting  Solipsism,  we  have  removed  any  ground  for  our  con- 
clusion that  the  .Ibsolute  is  experience. 


CHAPTER    XXII. 


NATURE. 


The  word  Nature  has  of  course  more  meanings  than 
one.  I  am  going  to  use  it  here  in  the  sense  of  the 
bare  physical  world,  that  region  which  forms  the 
object  of  purely  physical  science,  and  appears  to  fall 
outside  of  all  mind.  Abstract  from  everything 
psychical,  and  then  the  remainder  of  existence  will  be 
Nature  It  will  be  mere  body  or  the  extended,  so 
far  as  that  is  not  psychical,  together  with  the  pro- 
perties immediately  connected  with  or  following  from 
this  extension.  And  we  sometimes  forget  that  this 
world,  in  the  mental  history  of  each  of  us,  once  had 
no  existence.  Whatever  view  we  take  with  regard 
to  the  psychological  origin  of  extension,  the  result 
will  be  the  same.  There  was  a  time  when  the 
separation  of  the  outer  world,  as  a  thing  real  apart 
from  our  feeling,  had  not  even  been  begun.  The 
physical  world,  whether  it  exists  independently  or 
not,  is,  for  each  of  us,  an  abstraction  from  the  en- 
tire reality.  And  the  development  of  this  reality, 
and  of  the  division  which  we  make  in  it,  requires 
naturally  some  time.  But  I  do  not  propose  to 
discuss  the  subject  further  here.' 

Then  there  comes  a  period  when  we  all  gain  the 
idea  of  mere  body.  I  do  not  mean  that  we  always, 
or  even  habitually,  regard  the  outer  world  as  stand- 
ing and  persisting  in  divorce  from  all  feeling.  But, 
still,  at  least  for  certain  purposes,  we  get  the  notion 
of  such  a  world,  consisting  both  of  primary  and  also 

'  For  some  further  remarks  see  Mind,  No.  47. 


\ 


262 


REALITY. 


of  secondary  qualities.  This  world  strikes  us  as  not 
dependent  on  the  inner  life  of  any  one.  We  view  it 
as  standing  there,  the  same  for  every  soul  with 
which  it  comes  into  relation.  Our  bodies  with  their 
organs  are  taken  as  the  instruments  and  media, 
which  should  convey  it  as  it  is,  and  as  it  exists  apart 
from  them.  And  we  find  no  difficulty  in  the  idea 
of  a  bodily  reality  remaining  still  and  holding  firm 
when  every  self  has  been  removed.  Such  a  sup- 
position to  the  average  man  appears  obviously 
possible,  however  much,  for  other  reasons,  he  might 
decline  to  entertain  it  And  the  assurance  that  his 
supposition  is  meaningless  nonsense  he  rejects  as 
contrary  to  what  he  calls  common  sense. 

And  then,  to  the  person  who  reflects,  comes  in  the 
old  series  of  doubts  and  objections,  and  the  useless 
attempts  at  solution  or  compromise.  For  Nature  to 
the  common  man  is  not  the  Nature  of  tlie  physicist ; 
and  the  physicist  himself,  outside  his  science,  still 
habitually  views  the  world  as  what  he  must  believe 
it  cannot  be.  But  there  should  be  no  need  to  recall 
the  discussion  of  our  First  Book  with  regard  to 
secondary  and  primary  qualities.  We  endeavoured 
to  show  there  that  it  is  difficult  to  take  both  on  a 
level,  and  impossible  to  make  reality  consist  of  one 
class  in  separation  from  the  other.  And  the  un- 
fortunate upholder  of  a  mere  physical  nature  escapes 
only  by  blindness  from  hopeless  bewilderment.  He 
is  forced  to  the  conclusion  that  all  I  know  is  an 
affection  of  my  organism,  and  then  my  organism 
itself  turns  out  to  be  nothing  else  but  such  an 
affection.  There  is  in  short  no  physical  thing  but 
that  which  is  a  mere  state  of  a  physical  thing,  and 
perhaps  in  the  end  even  (it  might  be  contended) 
a  mere  state  of  itself.  It  will  be  instructive  to  con- 
sider Nature  from  this  point  of  view. 

We  may  here  use  the  form  of  what  has  been  called 
an  Antinomy,  (a)  Nature  is  only  for  my  body;  bur, 
on  the  other  hand,  {&)  My  body  is  only  for  Nature. 


I 


NATURE. 


263 


(a)  I  need  say  no  more  on  the  thesis  that  the 
outer  world  is  known  only  as  a  state  of  my  organism. 
Its  proper  consequence  (according  to  the  view 
^fenerally  received)  appears  to  be  that  everything 
else  is  a  state  of  my  brain.  For  that  (apparently) 
is  all  which  can  possibly  be  experienced.  Into  the 
further  refinements,  which  would  arise  from  the 
question  of  cerebral  localization,  I  do  not  think  it 
necessar)'  to  enter. 

{d)  And  yet  most  emphatically,  as  we  have  seen 
at  the  beginnin^f  of  this  work,  my  organism  is 
nothing  but  appearance  to  a  body.  It  itself  is  only 
the  bare  state  of  a  natural  object.  For  my  organism, 
like  all  else,  is  but  what  is  experienced,  and  I  can 
only  experience  my  organism  in  relation  to  its  own 
organs.  Hence  the  whole  body  is  a  mere  state  of/ 
these ;  and  they  are  states  of  one  another  in  in- 
definite regress. 

How  can  we  deny  this  ?  If  we  appeal  to  an 
immediate  experience,  which  presents  me  with  my 
body  as  a  something  extended  and  solid,  we  are 
taking  refuge  in  a  world  of  exploded  iilusions.  No 
such  peculiar  intuition  can  bear  the  light  of  a  serious 
psychology.  The  internal  feelings,  which  I  ex- 
perience, certainly  give  nothing  of  the  sort ;  and 
again,  even  if  they  did,  yet  for  natural  science  they 
are  no  direct  reality,  but  themselves  the  states  of  a 
material  nervous  system.  And  to  fall  back  on  a 
supposed  wholesale  revelation  of  Resistance  would 
be  surely  to  seek  aid  from  that  which  cannot  help. 
For  the  revelation  in  the  first  place  (as  we  have 
already  perceived  in  Chapter  x.),  is  a  fiction.  And, 
in  the  second  place,  Resistance  could  not  present  us 
with  a  body  independently  real.  It  could  supply 
only  the  relation  of  one  thing  to  another,  where 
neither  thing,  as  what  resists,  is  a  separate  body, 
either  apart  from,  or  again  in  relation  to,  the  other. 
Resistance  could  not  conceivably  tell  us  what  any- 
thing is  in  itself.     It  gives  us  one  thing  as  qualified 


264 


REALITY. 


by  the  state  of  another  thing,  each  within  that  known 
relation  being  only  for  the  other,  and,  apart  from  it, 
being  unknown  and,  so  far,  a  nonentity. 

And  that  is  the  general  conclusion  with  regard  to 
Nature  to  which  we  are  driven.  The  physical  world 
is  the  relation  between  physical  things.  And  the 
relation,  on  the  one  side,  presupposes  them  as 
physical,  while  apart  from  it,  on  the  other  side,  they 
certainly  are  not  so.  Nature  is  the  phenomenal 
relation  of  the  unknown  to  the  unknown  ;  and  the 
terms  cannot,  because  unknown,  even  be  said  to  be 
related,  since  they  cannot  themselves  be  said  to  be 
anything  at  all.      Let  us  develope  this  further. 

That  the  outer  world  is  only  for  my  organs  ap- 
pears inevitable.  Hut  what  is  an  organ  except  so 
tar  as  it  is  known  ?  And  how  can  it  be  known  but 
as  itself  the  state  of  an  organ  ?  If  then  you  are 
asked  to  find  an  organ  which  is  a  physical  object, 
you  can  no  more  find  it  than  a  body  which  itself  is  a 
body.  Each  is  a  state  of  something  else,  which  is 
never  more  than  a  state — and  the  something  escapes 
us.  The  same  consequence,  again,  is  palpable  if  we 
take  refuge  in  the  brain.  If  the  world  is  my  brain- 
state,  then  what  is  my  own  brain  ?  That  is  nothing 
but  the  state  of  some  brain,  I  need  not  proceed  to 
ask  whose.'  It  is,  in  any  case,  not  real  as  a  physical 
thing,  unless  you  reduce  it  to  the  adjective  of  a 
physical  thing.  And  this  illusive  quest  goes  on  for 
ever.  It  can  never  lead  you  to  what  is  more  than 
either  an  adjective  of,  or  a  relation  between, — what 
you  cannot  find. 

There  is  no  escaping  from  this  circle.  Let  us  take 
the  instance  of  a  double  perception  of  touch,  a  and  b. 
Then  a  is  only  a  state  of  the  organ  C,  and  b  is  only 
a  state  of  the  organ  D.  And  if  you  wish  to  say  that 
either  C  or  Z>  is  itself  real  as  a  body,  you  can  only 
do  so  on  the  witness  of  another  organ  E  or  F.    You 

'  For  me  my  own  brain  in  the  end  must  be  a  stale  of  my  own 
brain,  p.  263. 


NATURE. 


265 


can  in  no  case  arrive  at  a  something  material  ex- 
isting as  a  substantive  ;  you  are  compelled  to 
wander  without  end  from  one  adjective  to  another 
adjective.  And  in  double  perception  the  twofold 
evidence  does  not  show  that  each  side  is  body.  It 
leads  to  the  conclusion  that  neither  side  is  more  than 
a  dependant,  on  we  do  not  know  what. 

And  if  we  consult  common  experience,  we  gain  no 
support  for  one  side  of  our  antinomy.      It  is  clear 
that,  for  the  existence  of  our  organism,  we  find  there 
the  same  evidence  as  for  the    existence  of  outer 
objects.     We  have  a  witness  which,  with  our  body,  \ 
gives  us  the  environment  as  equally  real.      For  we  ' 
never,    under  any  circumstances,  are  without  some 
external  sensation.     If  you  receive,  in  the  ordinary 
sense,  the  testimony  of  our  organs,  then,  if  the  outer 
world  is  not  real,  our  organs  are  not  real.     You  have  | 
both  sides  given  as  on  a  level,  or  you  have  neither 
side  at  all.     And  to   say  that  one   side  is  the  sub- 
stantive, to  which  the  other  belongs,  as  an  appendage 
or  appurtenance,  seems  quite  against  reason.     We 
are,  in   brief,  confirmed   in    the  conclusion   we  had  1 
reached.     Both   Nature  and  my  body  exist  neces-  / 
sarily   with   and   for  one  another.      And   both,   on/ 
examination,  turn  out  to  be  nothing  apart  from  theirl 
relation.     We  find  in  each  no  essence  which  is  not 
infected  by  appearance  to  the  other. 

.And  with  this  we  are  brought  to  an  unavoidable  , 
result.'     The  physical  world  is  an  appearance  ;  it  is  ' 
phenomenal  throughout.      It  is  the  relation  of  two 
unknowns,   which,  because   they  are  unknown,  we 
cannot  have  any    right  to  regard  as  really  two,  or 
as  related  at  all.     It  is  an  imperfect  way  of  appre- 
hension, which  gives  us  qualities  and  relations,  each  1 
the   condition  of  and   yet   presupposing  the  other,  f 

'  This  result  (the  reader  must  remember)  rests,  not  merely  on 
the  above,  but  on  the  discussions  of  our  First  Book.  The  titles 
of  some  chapters  there  should  be  a  sufficient  reference. 


m 


REALITY. 


And  we  have  no  means  of  knowing  how  this  confu- 
sion and  perplexity  is  resolved  in  the  Absolute. 
The  material  world  is  an  incorrect,  a  one-sided,  and 
self-contradictory  appearance  of  the  Real.  It  is  the 
reaction  of  two  unknown  things,  things,  which,  to 
be  related,  must  each  be  something  by  itself,  and 
yet,  apart  from  their  relation,  are  noihinur  at  all.  In 
other  words  it  is  a  diversity  which,  as  we  regard 
it,  is  not  real,  but  which  somehow,  in  all  its  fulness, 
enters  into  and  perfects  the  life  of  the  Universe. 
But,  as  to  the  manner  in  which  it  is  included,  we 
are  unable  to  say  anything. 

But  is  this  circular  connexion,  this  baseless  inter- 
relation between  the  organism  and  Nature,  a  mis- 
take to  be  set  aside  ?  Most  emphatically  not  so, 
for  it  seems  a  vital  scheme,  and  a  necessary  way  of 
happening  among  our  appearances.  It  is  an  ar- 
rangement among  phenomena  by  which  the  ex- 
tended only  comes  to  us  in  relation  with  another 
extended  which  we  call  an  organism.  You  cannot 
have  certain  qualities,  of  touch,  or  sight,  or  hearing, 
unless  there  is  with  them  a  certain  connection  of 
other  qualities.  Nature  has  phenomenal  reality  as  a 
grouping  and  as  laws  of  sequence  and  co-existence, 
holding  good  within  a  certain  section  of  that  which 
appears  to  us.  But,  if  you  attempt  to  make  it 
more,  you  will  re-enter  those  mazes  from  which  we 
found  no  exit.  You  are  led  to  take  the  physical 
world  as  a  mere  adjective  of  my  body,  and  you  find 
that  my  body,  on  the  other  hand,  is  not  one  whit 
more  substantival.  It  is  itself  for  ever  the  state  of 
something  further  and  beyond.  And,  as  we  per- 
ceived in  our  First  Book,  you  can  neither  take  the 
qualities,  that  are  called  primary,  as  real  without 
the  secondary,  nor  again  the  latter  as  existing  apart 
from  my  feeling.  These  are  all  distinctions  which, 
as  we  saw,  are  reduced,  and  which  come  together 
in  the  one  great  totality  of  absolute  experience. 
They  are  lost  there  for  our  vision,  but  survive  most 


NATURE. 


267 


assuredly  in  that  which  absorbs  them.  Nature  is 
but  one  part  of  the  feeh'ng  whole,  which  we  have 
separated  by  our  abstraction,  and  enlarged  by  theo- 
retical necessity  and  contrivance.  And  then  we  set 
up  this  fragment  as  self-existing;  and  what  is  some- 
times called  "  science  "  goes  out  of  its  way  to  make 
a  gross  mistake.  It  takes  an  intellectual  construc- 
tion of  the  conditions  of  mere  appearance  for  inde-  f 
pendent  reality.  And  it  would  thrust  this  fiction 
on  us  as  the  one  thing  which  has  solid  being.  But 
thus  it  turns  into  sheer  error  a  relative  truth.  It 
discredits  that  which,  as  a  working  point  of  view,  is  | 
fully  justified  by  success,  and  stands  high  above 
criticism. 

We  have  seen,  so  far,  that  mere  Nature  is  not 
real.  Nature  is  but  an  appearance  within  the  re- 
ality ;  it  is  a  partial  and  imperfect  manifestation  of  i 
the  Absolute.  The  physical  world  is  an  abstraction,/ 
which,  for  certain  purposes  is  properly  considered  by 
itself,  but  which,  if  taken  as  standing  in  its  own 
right,  becomes  at  once  self-contradictory.  We  must 
now  develope  this  general  view  in  some  part  of  its 
detail. 


I 


But,  before  proceeding,  I  will  deal  with  a  point 
of  some  interest.  We,  so  far,  have  treated  the 
physical  world  as  extended,  and  a  doubt  may  be 
raised  whether  such  an  assumption  can  be  justified. 
Extension,  1  may  be  told,  is  not  essential  to  Nature; 
for  the  extended  need  not  always  be  physical,  nor 
again  the  physical  always  extended.  And  it  is  bet- 
ter at  once  to  attempt  to  get  clear  on  this  point.  It 
is,  in  the  first  place,  quite  true  that  not  all  of  the  ex- 
tended forms  part  of  Nature.  For  I  may  think  of, 
and  may  imagine,  things  extended  at  my  pleasure, 
and  it  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  all  these  psych- 
ical facts  take  a  place  within  our  physical  system. 
Yet,  upon  the  other  hand,  I  do  not  see  how  we  can 
deny  their  extension.     That,  which  for  my  mind  is 


268 


REALITY. 


extended,  must  be  so  as  a  fact,  whether  it  does,  or 
does  not,  belong  to  what  we  call  Nature.  Take,  for 
example,  some  common  illusion  of  sense.  In  that 
we  actually  may  have  a  perception  of  extension,  and 
to  call  this  false  does  not  show  that  it  is  not  some- 
how spatial.  But,  if  so.  Nature  and  extension  will 
not  coincide.  Hence  we  are  forced  to  seek  the  dis- 
tinctive essence  of  Nature  elsewhere,  and  in  some 
non-spatial  character. 

In  its  bare  principle  I  am  able  to  accept  this  con- 
clusion. The  essence  of  Nature  is  to  appear  as  a 
region  standing  outside  the  psychical,  and  as  (in 
some  part)  suffering  and  causing  change  independent 
of  that.  Or,  at  the  very  least,  Nature  must  not  be 
always  directly  dependent  on  soul.  Nature  presup- 
poses the  distinction  of  the  not-self  from  the  self  It 
is  that  part  of  the  world  which  is  not  inseparably 
one  thing  in  experience  with  those  internal  groups 
which  feel  pleasure  and  pain.  It  is  the  attendant 
medium  by  which  selves  are  made  manifest  to  one 
another.  But  it  shows  an  existence  and  laws  not  be- 
longing to  these  selves  ;  and,  to  some  extent  at  least, 
It  appears  indifferent  to  their  feelings,  and  thoughts, 
and  volitions.  It  is  this  independence  which  would 
seem  to  be  the  distinctive  mark  of  Nature. 

And,  if  so,  it  may  be  urged  that  Nature  is  per- 
haps not  extended,  and  I  think  we  must  admit  that 
such  a  Nature  is  possible.  We  may  imagine  groups 
of  qualities,  for  example  sounds  or  smells,  arranged 
in  such  a  way  as  to  appear  independent  of  the  psych- 
ical. These  qualities  might  seem  to  go  their  own 
ways  without  any,  or  much,  regard  to  our  ideas  or 
likings;  and  they  might  maintain  such  an  order  as  to 
form  a  stable  and  permanent  not-self.  These  groups, 
again,  might  serve  as  the  means  of  communication 
between  souls,  and,  in  short,  might  answer  every 
known  purpose  for  which  Nature  exists.  Even  as 
things  are,  when  these  secondary  qualities  are  local- 
ized in  outer  space,  we  regard  them  as  physical  ; 


NATURE. 


269 


and  there  is  a  doubt,  therefore,  whether  any  such 
localization  is  necessary.  And,  for  myself,  I  am 
unable  to  perceive  that  it  is  so.  Certainly,  if  I  try 
to  imagine  an  unextended  world  of  this  kind,  1  ad- 
mit that,  against  my  will,  I  give  it  a  spatial  character. 
But,  so  far  as  I  see,  this  may  arise  from  mere  in- 
firmity ;  and  the  idea  of  an  unextended  Nature 
seems,  for  my  knowledge  at  least,  not  self-contra- 
dictory. 

But,  having  gone  as  far  as  this,  I  am  unable  to  go 
farther.  A  Nature  without  extension  I  admit  to  be 
possible,  but  I  can  discover  no  good  reason  for  tak- 
ing it  as  actual.  For  the  physical  world,  which  we 
encounter,  is  certainly  spatial  ;  and  we  have  no  in- 
terest in  trying  to  seek  out  any  other.  If  Nature 
on  our  view  were  reality,  the  case  would  be  altered; 
and  we  should  then  be  forced  to  entertain  every 
doubt  about  its  essence.  But  for  us  Nature  is  ap- 
pearance, inconsistent  and  untrue  ;  and  hence  the 
supposition  of  another  Nature,  free  from  extension, 
could  furnish  no  help.  This  supposition  does  not 
remove  the  contradictions  from  actual  extension, 
which  in  any  case  is  still  a  fact.  And,  again,  even 
within  itself,  the  supposition  cannot  be  made  con- 
sistent with  itself.  We  may,  therefore,  pass  on  with- 
out troubling  ourselves  with  such  a  mere  possibility. 
We  cannot  conclude  that  all  Nature  essentially  must 
have  extension.  But,  since  at  any  rate  our  physical 
world  is  extended,  and  since  the  hypothesis  of 
another  kind  of  Nature  has  no  interest,  that  idea 
may  be  dismissed.  I  shall  henceforth  take  Nature 
as  appearing  always  in  the  form  of  space.' 

Let  us  return  from  this  digression.     We  are  to 

'  I  may  perhaps  add  that  "  resistance  "  is  no  sufficient  answer 
to  the  question  "  What  is  Nature  ?  "  A  persisting  idea  may  in  the 
fullest  sense  "resist";  but  can  we  find  in  that  the  essence  of 
what  we  mean  by  the  physical  world?  The  claims  of  "resist- 
ance "  have,  however,  been  disposed  of  already,  pp.  116,  225,  263. 


370 


REALITY. 


consider  Nature  as  possessed  of  extension,  and  we 
have  seen  that  mere  Nature  has  no  reality.  We 
may  now  proceed  to  a  series  of  subordinate  ques- 
tions, and  the  first  of  these  is  about  the  world  which 
is  called  inorganic.  Is  there  in  fact  such  a  thing  as 
inorganic  Nature  ?  Now,  if  by  this  we  meant  a 
region  or  division  of  existence,  not  subserving  and 
entering  into  the  one  experience  of  the  Whole,  the 
question  already  would  have  been  settled.  There 
cannot  exist  an  arrangement  which  fails  to  perfect, 
.md  to  minister  directly  to,  the  feeling  of  the  Abso- 
lute. Nor  again,  since  in  the  Absolute  all  comes 
together,  could  there  be  anything  inorganic  in  the 
sense  of  standing  apart  from  some  essential  relation 
to  finite  organisms.  Any  such  mutilations  as  these 
iiave  long  ago  been  condemned,  and  it  is  in  another 
sense  that  we  must  inquire  about  the  inorganic. 
By  an  organism  we  are  to  understand  a  more  or 

I  less  permanent  arrangement  of  qualities  and  rela- 
uons,  such  as  at  once  falls  outside  of,  and  yet  imme- 
diately subserves,  a  distinct  unity  of  feeling.  We 
are  to  mean  a  phenomenal  group  with  which  a  felt 
particularity  is  connected  in  a  way  to  be  discussed 
in  the  next  chapter.  At  least  this  is  the  sense  in 
which,  however  incorrectly,  I  am  about  to  use  the 
word.  The  question,  therefore,  here  will  be  whether 
there  are  elements  in  Nature,  which  fail  to  make  a 
part  of  some  such  finite  arrangement.  The  inquiry 
is  intelligible,  but  for  metaphysics  it  seems  to  have 
no  importance. 

The  question  in  the  first  place,  I  think,  cannot  be 
answered.  For,  if  we  consider  it  in  the  abstract,  1 
find  no  good  ground  for  either  affirmation  or  denial. 
I  know  no  reason  why  in  the  Absolute  there  should 
not  be  qualities,  which  fail  to  be  connected,  as  a 
body,  with  some  finite  soul.  And,  ujaon  the  other 
hand,  I  see  no  special  cause  for  supposing  that  these 
exist.  And  when,  leaving  the  abstract  point  of 
view,  we  regard  this  problem  from  the  side  of  con- 


NATURE. 


271 


Crete  facts,  then,  so  far  as  I  perceive,  we  are  able  to 
make  no  advance.  For  as  to  that  which  can,  and 
that  which  cannot,  play  the  part  of  an  organism,  we 
know  very  little.  A  sameness  greater  or  less  with 
our  own  bodies  is  the  basis  from  which  we  conclude 
to  other  bodies  and  souls.  And  what  this  inference 
loses  in  exactitude  (Chapter  .\xi.),  it  gains  on  the 
other  hand  in  extent,  by  acquiring  a  greater  range 
of  application.  And  it  would  seem  almost  impos- 
sible, from  this  ground,  to  produce  a  satisfactory 
negative  result.  A  certain  likeness  of  outward  form,/ 
and  again  some  amount  of  similarity  in  action,  are 
what  we  stand  on  when  we  argue  to  psychical  lifej 
But  our  failure,  on  the  other  side,  to  discover  these 
symptoms  is  no  sufficient  warrant  for  positive  dej 
nia!.'  There  may  surely  beyond  our  knowledge  be 
strange  arrangements  of  qualities,  which  serve  as 
the  condition  of  unknown  personal  unities.  Given 
a  certain  degree  of  difference  in  the  outward  form, 
and  a  certain  divergence  in  the  way  of  manifestation, 
and  we  should  fail  at  once  to  perceive  the  jiresence 
of  an  organism.  But  would  it,  therefore,  always  not 
exist  ?  Or  can  we  assume,  because  we  have  found 
out  the  nature  of  some  organisms,  that  we  have 
exhausted  that  of  all  ?  Have  we  an  ascertained 
essence,  outside  of  which  no  variation  is  possible  .'' 
.A.ny  such  contention  would  seem  to  be  indefensible. 
Every  fragment  of  visible  Nature  might,  so  far  as  is 
known,  serve  as  part  in  some  organism  not  like  our 
bodies.  And,  if  we  consider  further  how  much  of 
Nature  may  be  hid  from  our  view,  we  shall  surely 
be  still  less  inclined  to  dogmatism.  For  that  which 
we  see  may  be  combined  in  an  organic  unity  with 
tile  invisible  ;  and,  again,  one  and  the  same  element 
might  have  a  position  and  function  in  any  number 
of  organisms.  But  there  is  no  advantage  in  trying 
lo  fill  the  unknown  with  our  fancies.      It  should  be 

'  It  is  natural  in  this  connection  to  refer  to  Fechner's  vigorous 
advocacy. 


272 


REALITY. 


clear,  when  we  reflect,  that  we  are  in  no  condition 
on  this  point  to  fix  a  limit  to  the  possible,'  Ar- 
rangements, apparently  quite  different  from  our  own, 
and  expressing  themselves  in  what  seems  a  wholly 
unlike  way,  might  be  directly  connected  with  finite 
centres  of  feeling.  And  our  result  here  must  be 
this,  that,  except  in  relation  to  our  ignorance,  we  can- 
not call  the  least  portion  of  Nature  inorganic.  For 
some  practical  purposes,  of  course,  the  case  is  radi- 
cally altered.  We  of  course  there  have  a  perfect 
right  to  act  upon  ignorance.  We  not  only  may,  but 
even  must,  often  treat  the  unseen  as  non-existent. 
Hut  in  metaphysics  such  an  attitude  cannot  be 
justified,-  We,  on  one  side,  have  positive  know- 
ledge that  some  parts  of  Nature  are  organisms  ;  but 
whether,  upon  the  other  side,  anything  inorganic 
exists  or  not,  we  have  no  means  of  judging.  Hence 
to  give  an  answer  to  our  question  is  impossible. 

But  this  inability  seems  a  matter  of  no  importance. 
l"or  finite  organisms,  as  we  have  seen,  are  but  pheno- 
menal appearance,  and  both  their  division  and  their 
unity  is  transcended  in  the  Absolute.  And  assured- 
ly the  inorganic,  if  it  exists,  will  be  still  more  unreal. 
It  will,  in  any  case,  not  merely  be  bound  in  relation 
with  organisms,  but  will,  together  with  them,  be  in- 
cluded in  a  single  and  all-absorbing  experience,  It 
will  become  a  feature  and  an  clement  in  that  Whole 
where  no  diversity  is  lost,  but  where  the  oneness  is 
something  much  more  than  organic.  And  with  this 
I  will  pass  on  to  a  further  inquiry. 

We  have  seen  that  beyond  experience  nothing 
can  exist,  and  hence  no  part  of  Nature  can  fall  out- 
side of  the  Absolute's  perfection.  But  the  question 
as  to  the  necessity  of  experience  may  still  be  raised 

'  If  we  consider  further  the  possibility  of  diverse  material  systems, 
and  of  the  compenetrahility  of  bodies  within  each  system,  we  shall 
be  even  less  disposed  to  dogmatize.     See  below,  pp.  287,  289. 

"  On  the  main  principle  see  Chapter  xxvii. 


NATURE. 


273 


in  a  modified  sense.      Is   there  any  Nature  not  ex-| 
perienced   by  a  finite  subject  ?     Can  we  suppose  in' 
the  Absolute  a  margin  of  physical  qualities,  which, 
so  to  speak,  do  not  pass  through  some  finite  perci- 
pient ?     Of  course,  if  this  is  so,  we  cannot  perceive/ 
them.    But  the  question  is  whether,  notwithstandingy 
we  may,  or  even  must,  suppose  that  such  a  margin 
exists,     (a)  Is  a  physical  fact,  which  is  not /or  some^ 
finite  sentient  being,  a  thing  which  is  possible  ?    And 
(6),  in  the  next  place,  have  we  sufficient  ground  to 
take  it  also  as  real  ? 

(a)  In  defence,  first,  of  its  possibility  there  is 
something  to  be  said.  "  Admitted,"  we  shall  be 
told,  '*  that  relation  to  a  finite  soul  is  the  condition 
under  which  Nature  appears  to  us,  it  does  not  follow 
that  this  condition  is  indispensable.  To  assert  that 
those  very  qualities,  which  we  meet  under  certain 
conditions,  can  exist  apart  from  them,  is  perhaps 
going  too  far.  But,  on  the  other  side,  some  quali- 
ties of  the  sort  we  call  sensible  might  not  require  (so 
to  speak)  to  be  developed  on  or  filtered  through  a 
particular  soul.  These  qualities  in  the  end,  like  all 
the  rest,  would  certainly,  as  such,  be  absorbed  in  the 
Absolute  ;  but  they  (so  to  speak)  might  find  their 
way  to  this  end  by  themselves,  and  might  not  re- 
quire the  mediation  of  a  finite  sentence."  But  this 
defence,  it  seems  to  me,  is  insufficient.  We  can 
think,  in  a  manner,  of  sensible  quality  apart  from  a 
soul,  but  the  doubt  is  whether  such  a  manner  is 
really  legitimate.  The  question  is,  when  we  have 
abstracted  from  finite  centres  of  feeling,  whether  w( 
have  not  removed  all  meaning  from  sensible  quality 
And  again,  if  we  admit  that  in  the  Absolute  there  I 
may  be  matter  not  contained  in  finite  experience, 
can  we  go  on  to  make  this  matter  a  part  of  Nature, 
and  call  it  physical  .■'  These  two  questions  appear 
to  be  vitally  distinct. 

A  margin  of  experience,  not  the  experience  of  any 
finite  centre,    we  shall   find    (Chapter  xxvii.)  can- 

A.  R.  T 


274 


REALITY. 


\ 


not  be  called  impossible.  But  it  seems  another 
thing  to  place  such  matter  in  Nature.  For  Nature 
is  constituted  and  upheld  by  a  division  in  experience. 
It  is,  in  its  essence,  a  product  of  distinction  and  op- 
position. And  to  take  this  product  as  existing  out- 
side finite  centres  seems  indefensible.  The  Nature 
that  falls  outside,  we  must   insist,  may  perhaps   not 

I  .be  nothing,  but  it  is  not  Nature.      If  it  is  fact,  it  is 

\  fact  which  we  must  not  call  physical. 

But  this  whole  enquir)',  on  the  other  hand,  seems 
unimportant  and  almost  idle.  P'or,  though  unper- 
ceived  by  finite  souls,  all  Nature  would  enter  into 
one  experience  with  the  contents  of  these  souls. 
And  hence  the  want  of  apprehension  by,  and  pas- 
sage through,  a  particular  focus  would  lose  in  the 
end  its  significance.  Thus,  even  if  we  admit  fact, 
not  included  in  finite  centres  of  sentience,  our  view 
of  the  Absolute,  after  all,  will  not  be  altered.  But 
such  fact,  we  have  seen,  could  not  be  properly  phys- 
ical. 

(iJ)  A  part  of  Nature,  not  apprehended  by  finite 
mind,  we  have  found  in  some  sense  is  barely  possible. 
But  we  may  be  told  now,  on  the  other  hand,  that  it 
is  necessary  to  assume  it.  There  are  such  difficul- 
ties in  the  way  of  any  other  conclusion  that  we  may 
seem  to  have  no  choice.  Nature  is  too  wide,  we 
may  hear,  to  be  taken  in  by  any  number  of  sentient 
beings.  And  again  Nature  is  in  part  not  perceptible 
at  all.  My  own  brain,  while  I  am  alive,  is  an  ob- 
vious instance  of  this.  And  we  may  think  further 
of  the  objects  known  only  by  the  microscope,  and  of 
the  bodies,  intangible  and  invisible,  assured  to  us  by 
science.  And  the  mountains,  that  endure  always, 
must  be  more  than  the  sensations  of  short-lived  mor- 
tals ;  and  indeed  were  there  in  the  time  before  or- 
ganic life  was  developed.  In  the  face  of  these 
objections,  it  may  be  said,  we  are  unable  to  persist. 
The  necessity  of  finite  souls  for  the  existence  of 
Nature    cannot     possibly     be     maintained.       And 


NATURE. 


275 


hence  a  physical  world,  not  apprehended  by  these  J 
perceiving  centres,  must  somehow  be  postulated. 

The  objections  at  first  may  seem  weighty,  but  I 
will  endeavour  to  show  that  they  cannot  stand 
criticism.  And  I  will  begin  by  laying  down  a  neces- 
sary distinction.  The  physical  world  exists,  of 
course,  independent  of  me,  and  does  not  depend  on 
the  accident  of  my  sensations,  A  mountain  is, 
whether  I  happen  to  perceive  it  or  not  This  truth 
is  certain  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  its  meaning  is 
ambiguous,  and  it  may  be  taken  in  two  very  different 
senses.  We  may  call  these  senses,  if  we  please, 
categorical  and  hypothetical.  You  may  either  assert  \ 
that  the  mountain  always  actually  is,  as  it  is  when  it 
is  perceived.  Or  you  may  mean  only  that  it  is  al- 
ways something  apart  from  sensible  perception  ;  and  , 
that  whenever  it  is  perceived,  it  then  developes  its 
familiar  character.  And  a  confusion  between  the 
mountain,  as  it  is  in  itself,  and  as  it  becomes  for  an 
observer,  is  perhaps  our  most  usual  state  of  mind. 
But  such  an  obscurity  would  be  fatal  to  the  present 
enquiry. 

(i.)  I  will  take  the  objections,  first,  as  applying  to 
what  we  have  called  the  categorical  sense.  Nature 
must  be  in  itself,  as  we  perceive  it  to  be  ;  and,  if  so. 
Nature  must  fall  partly  beyond  finite  minds — this  is, 
so  far,  the  argument  urged  against  our  view.  But 
this  argument  surely  would  be  based  upon  our  mere 
ignorance.  For  we  have  seen  that  organisms  unlike 
our  own,  arrangements  pervading  and  absorbing  the 
whole  extent  of  Nature,  may  very  well  exist.  And  u" 
as  to  the  modes  of  perception  which  are  possible 
with  these  organisms,  we  can  lay  down  no  limit. 
But  if  so,  there  is  no  reason  why  all  Nature  should 
not  be  always  in  relation  to  finite  sentience.  Every 
part  of  it  may  be  now  actually,  for  some  other  mind, 
precisely  what  it  would  be  for  us,  if  we  happened  to 
perceive  it.  And  objects  invisible  like  my  brain,  or 
found  only  by  the  microscope,  need  not  cause  us  to 


276 


REALITY. 


hesitate.  For  we  cannot  deny  that  there  may  be 
some  faculty  of  sense  to  which  at  all  times  they  are 
obvious.  And  the  mountains  that  endure  may,  for 
all  that  we  know,  have  been  visible  always.  They 
may  have  been  perceived  through  their  past  as  we 
perceive  them  to-day.  If  we  can  set  no  bounds  to 
the  existence  and  the  powers  of  sentient  beings,  the 
objection,  so  far,  has  been  based  on  a  false  assump- 
tion of  knowledge.' 

(ii.)  But  this  line  of  reply,  perhaps,  may  be  carried 
too  far.  It  cannot  be  refuted,  and  yet  we  feel  that 
it  tends  to  become  extravagant.  It  may  be  possible 
that  Nature  throughout  is  perceived  always,  and 
thus  always  is,  as  we  should  perceive  it  ;  but  we 
need  not  rest  our  whole  weight  on  this  assumption. 
Our  conclusion  will  be  borne  out  by  something  less. 
For  beyond  the  things  perceived  by  sense  there  ex- 
tends the  world  of  thought.  Nature  will  not  merely 
be  the  region  that  is  presented  and  also  thought  of, 
but  it  will,  in  addition,  include  matter  which  is 
only  thought  of.  Nature  will  hence  be  limited  solely 
by  the  range  of  our  intellects.  It  will  be  the  phy- 
sical universe  apprehended  in  any  way  whatever  by 
finite  souls. 

Outside  of  this  boundary  there  is  no  Nature. 
We  may  employ  the  idea  of  a  pre-organic  time,  or 
of  a  physical  world  from  which  all  sentience  has  dis- 
appeared. But,  with  the  knowledge  that  we  possess, 
we  cannot,  even  in  a  relative  sense,  take  this  result 
as  universal.  It  could  hold  only  with  respect  to 
those  organisms  which  we  know,  and.  if  carried  fur- 
ther, it  obviously  becomes  invalid.  And  again,  such 
a  truth,  where  it  is  true,  can  be  merely  phenomenal. 
For,  in  any  case,  there  is  no  history  or  progress  in 
the  Absolute  (Chapter  xxvi).  A  Nature  withou 
sentience  is,  in  short,  a  mere  construction  for  science 


::\ 


'  "  'Tis  ignorance  that  makes  a  barren  waste 
Of  all  beyond  itself." 


NATURE. 


277 


and  it  possesses  a  very  partial  reality.'  Nor  are  the 
imperceptibles  of  physics  in  any  better  case.  Apart 
from  the  plain  contradictions  which  prove  them  to 
be  barely  phenomenal,  their  nature  clearly  exists  but 
in  relation  to  thought.  For,  not  being  perceived  by 
any  finite,  they  are  not,  as  such,  perceived  at  all ; 
and  what  reality  they  possess  is  not  sensible,  but 
merely  abstract. 

Our  conclusion  then,  so  far,  will  be  this.  Nature  . 
may  extend  beyond  the  region  actually  perceived  by  1 
the  finite,  but  certainly  not  beyond  the  limits  of  finite 
thought.  In  the  Absolute  possibly  there  is  a  mar- 
gin not  contained  in  finite  experiences  (Chapter 
xxvii.),  but  this  possible  margin  cannot  properly 
be  taken  as  physical.  For,  included  in  Nature,  it 
would  be  qualified  by  a  relation  to  finite  mind.  But 
the  existence  of  Nature,  as  mere  thought,  at  once 
leads  to  a  difficulty.  For  a  physical  world,  to  be 
real,  must  clearly  be  sensible.  And  to  exist  other- 
wise than  for  sense  is  but  to  exist  hypothetically. 
If  so.  Nature,  at  least  in  part,  is  not  actually  Nature, 
but  merely  is  what  becomes  so  under  certain  con- 
ditions. It  seems  another  fact,  a  something  else, 
which  indeed  we  think  of,  but  which,  merely  in  itself 
and  merely  as  we  think  of  it,  is  not  physical  reality. 
Thus,  on  our  view.  Nature  to  this  extent  seems  not 
to  be  fact ;  and  we  shall  have  been  driven,  in  the 
end,  to  deny  part  of  its  physical  existence. 

This  conclusion  urged  against  us,  I  admit,  is  in 
one  sense  inevitable.  The  Nature  that  is  thought 
of,  and  that  we  assume  not  to  be  perceived  by  any 
mind,  is,  in  the  strict  sense,  not  Nature.*  Yet 
such  a  result,  rightly  interpreted,  need  cause  us-no 
trouble.  We  shall  understand  it  better  when  we 
have  discussed  the  meaning  of  conditional  existence 
(Chapter   xxiv.) ;    I    will  however  attempt  to  deal 

'  See  more  below,  p.  283. 

'  That  is,  of  course,  so  long  as   Nature  is  confined  to  actual 
physical  fact 


278 


REALITY. 


here  with  the  present  difficulty.  And  what  that 
comes  to  is  briefly  this.  Nature  on  the  one  side 
must  be  actual,  and  if  so,  must  be  sensible ;  but, 
upon  the  other  hand,  it  seems  in  part  to  be  merely 
intelligible.  This  is  the  problem,  and  the  solution 
is  that  what  for  us  is  intelligible  only,  is  more  for 
the  Absolute.  There  somehow,  we  do  not  know 
how,  what  we  think  is  perceived.  Everything  there 
is  merged  and  re-absorbed  in  an  intuitive  experi- 
ence. 

What  we  merely  think  is  not  real,  because  in 
thinking  there  is  a  division  of  the  "  what "  from  the 
"  that."  But,  none  the  less,  every  thought  gives  us 
actual  content ;  and  the  presence  of  that  content  is 
fact,  quite  as  hard  as  any  possible  perception.  And 
so  the  Nature,  that  is  thought  of,  to  that  extent  does 
exist,  and  does  possess  a  certain  amount  of  positive 
character.  Hence  in  the  Absolute,  where  all  con- 
tent is  re-blended  with  existence,  the  Nature  thought 
of  will  gain  once  more  an  intuitional  form.  It  will 
come  together  with  itself  and  with  other  sides  of  the 
Universe,  and  will  make  its  special  contribution  to 
the  riches  of  the  Whole.  It  is  not  as  we  think  of  it, 
it  zs  not  as  it  becomes  when  in  our  experience 
thought  is  succeeded  by  perception.  It  is  something 
which,  only  under  certain  conditions,  turns  to  phy- 
sical fact  revealed  to  our  senses.  But  because  in 
the  Absolute  it  is  an  element  of  reality,  though  not 
known,  as  there  experienced,  to  any  finite  mind, — 
because,  again,  we  rightly  judge  it  to  be  physical 
fact,  if  it  became  perceived  by  sense — therefore  al- 
ready it  is  fact,  hypothetical  but  still  independent. 
JNature  in  this  sense  is  not  dependent  on  the  fancies 
m(  the  individual,  and  yet  it  has  no  content  but  what 
'is  relative  to  particular  minds.  We  may  assume  that 
without  any  addition  there  is  enough  matter  in  these 
centres  to  furnish  a  harmonious  experience  in  the 
Absolute.  There  is  no  element  in  that  unknown 
unity,  which  cannot  be  supplied  by  the  fragmentary 


NATURE. 


279 


life  of  its  members.  Outside  of  finite  experience 
there  is  neither  a  natural  world  nor  any  other  world 
at  all.' 

But  it  may  ,be  objected  that  we  have  now  been 
brought  into  collision  with  common  sense.  The 
whole  of  nature,  for  common  sense,  is ;  and  it  is, 
what  it  is,  whether  any  finite  being  apprehends  it  or 
not  On  our  view,  on  the  other  hand,  part  of 
the  physical  world  does  not,  as  such,  exist.  This 
objection  is  well  founded,  but  I  would  reply,  first, 
that  common  sense  is  hardly  consistent  with  itself. 
It  would  perhaps  hesitate,  for  instance,  to  place 
sweet  and  bitter  tastes,  as  such,  in  the  world  outside 
of  sense.  But  only  the  man  who  will  go  thus  far, 
who  believes  in  colours  in  the  darkness,  and  sounds 
without  an  ear,  can  stand  upon  this  ground.  If 
there  is  any  one  who  holds  that  flowers  blush  when 
utterly  unseen,  and  smell  delightfully  when  no  one 
delights  in  their  odour — he  may  object  to  our 
doctrine  and  may  be  invited  to  state  his  own.  But 
I  venture  to  think  that,  metaphysically,  his  view 
would  turn  out  not  worth  notice.  Any  serious 
theory  must  in  some  points  collide  with  common 
sense  ;  and,  if  we  are  to  look  at  the  matter  from 
this  side,  our  view  surely  is,  in  this  way,  superior  to 
others.  For  us  Nature,  through  a  great  part,  cer- 
tainly is  as  it  is  perceived.  Secondary  qualities  are 
an  actual  part  of  the  physical  world,  and  the  exist- 
ing thing  sugar  we  take  to  be,  itself,  actually  sweet 
and  pleasant.  Nay  the  very  beauty  of  Nature,  we 
shall  find  hereafter  (Chapter  xxvi.),  is,  for  us,  fact  as 
good  as  the  hardest  of  primary  qualities.  Every- 
thing physical,  which  is  seen  or  felt,  or  in  any  way 
experienced  or  enjoyed,  is,  on  our  view,  an  existing 
part  of  the  region  of  Nature  ;  and  it  is  in  Nature  as 
we  experience  it.     It  is  only  that  portion  which  is 

*  The  question  whether  any  part  of  the  contents  of  the  Uni- 
verse is  not  contained  in  finite  centres,  is  discussed  in  Chapter 
xxA^ii. 


aSo 


REALITY. 


but  thought  of,  only  that,  of  which  we  assume  that 
no  creature  perceives  it — which,  as  such,  is  not  fact. 
Thus,  while  admitting  our  collision  with  common 
sense,  I  would  lay  stress  upon  its  narrow  extent  and 
degree. 

We  have  now  seen  that  inorganic  Nature  perhaps 
does  not  exist.  Though  it  is  possible,  we  are 
unable  to  say  if  it  is  real.  But  with  regard  to 
Nature  falling  outside  all  finite  subjects  our  con- 
clusion is  different.  We  failed  to  discover  any 
ground  for  taking  that  as  real,  and,  if  strictly  under- 
stood, we  found  no  right  to  call  it  even  possible. 
The  importance  of  these  questions,  on  the  other 
hand  we  urged,  is  overrated.  For  they  all  de- 
pend on  distinctions  which,  though  not  lost,  are 
transcended  in  the  Absolute.  Whether  all  percep- 
tion and  feeling  must  pass  through  finite  souls, 
whether  any  physical  qualities  stand  out  and  are 
not  worked  up  into  organisms — into  arrangements 
which  directly  condition  such  souls — these  enquiries 
are  not  vital.  In  part  we  cannot  answer  them, 
and  in  part  our  reply  gives  us  little  that  possesses  a 
positive  value.  The  interrelation  between  organ- 
isms, and  their  division  from  the  inorganic,  and, 
again,  the  separation  of  finite  experiences,  from 
each  other  and  from  the  whole — these  are  not  any- 
thing which,  as  such,  can  hold  good  in  the  Absolute. 
That  one  reality,  the  richer  for  every  variety, 
absorbs  and  dissolves  these  phenomenal  limita- 
tions. Whether  there  is  a  margin  of  quality  not 
directly  making  part  of  some  particular  experience, 
whether,  again,  there  is  any  extension  outside  the 
physical  arrangements  which  immediately  subserve 
feeling  centrcs^in  the  end  these  questions  are  but 
our  questions.  The  answers  must  be  given  in  a 
language  without  meaning  for  the  Absolute,  until 
translated  into  a  way  of  expression  beyond  our 
powers.      But,   if  so  expressed,   we   can   perceive, 


NATURE. 


28  ( 


they  would  lose  that  importance  our  hard  distinc- 
tions confer  on  them.  And,  from  our  own  point  of 
view,  these  problems  have  proved  partly  to  be  in- 
soluble. The  value  of  our  answers  consists  mainly 
in  their  denial  of  partial  and  one-sided  doctrines. 

There  is  an  objection  which,  before  we  proceed, 
may  be  dealt  with.  "  Upon  your  view,"  I  may  be 
told,  "  there  is  really  after  all  no  Nature.  For 
Nature  is  one  solid  body,  the  images  of  which  are 
many,  and  which  itself  remains  single.  But  upon 
your  theory  we  have  a  number  of  similar  reflec- 
tions ;  and,  though  these  may  agree  among  them- 
selves, no  real  thing  comes  to  light  in  them.  Such 
an  appearance  will  not  account  for  Nature."  But 
this  objection  rests  on  what  must  be  called  a 
thoughtless  prejudice.  It  is  founded  on  the  idea 
that  identity  in  the  contents  of  various  souls  is 
impossible.  Separation  into  distinct  centres  of  feel- 
ing and  thought  is  assumed  to  preclude  all  same- 
ness between  what  falls  within  such  diverse  centres. 
But,  we  shall  see  more  fully  hereafter  (Chapter 
xxiii.),  this  assumption  is  groundless.  It  is  merely 
part  of  that  blind  prejudice  against  identity  in 
general  which  disappears  before  criticism.  That 
which  is  identical  in  quality  must  always,  so  far,  be 
one  ;  and  its  division,  in  time  or  space  or  in  several 
souls,  does  not  take  away  its  unity.  The  variety  of 
course  does  make  a  difference  to  the  identity,  and, 
without  that  difference  and  these  modifications,  the 
sameness  is  nothing.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  to 
take  sameness  as  destroyed  by  diversity,  makes 
impossible  all  thought  and  existence  alike.  It  is  a 
doctrine,  which,  if  carried  out,  quite  abolishes  the 
Universe.  Certainly,  in  the  end,  to  know  how  the 
one  and  many  are  united  is  beyond  our  powers. 
But  in  the  Absolute  somehow,  we  are  convinced,  the 
problem  is  solved. 

This  apparent  parcelling  out  of  Nature  is  but  appar- 


282 


REALITY. 


ent.  On  the  one  side  a  collection  of  what  falls  within 
distinct  souls,  on  the  other  side  it  possesses  unity  in 
the  Absolute.  Where  the  contents  of  the  several 
centres  all  come  together,  there  the  appearances  of 
Nature  of  course  will  be  one.  And,  if  we  consider 
the  question  from  the  side  of  each  separate  soul,  we 
still  can  find  no  difficulty.  Nature  for  each  per- 
cipient mainly  is  what  to  the  percipient  it  seems  to 
be,  and  it  mainly  is  so  without  regard  to  that  special 
percipient.  And,  if  this  is  so,  I  find  it  hard  to  see 
what  more  is  wanted.'  Of  course,  so  far  as  any  one 
soul  has  peculiar  sensations,  the  qualities  it  finds 
will  not  exist  unless  in  its  experience.  But  I  do 
not  know  why  they  should  do  so.  And  there  re- 
mains, I  admit,  that  uncertain  extent,  through  which 
Nature  is  perhaps  not  sensibly  perceived  by  any 
soul.  This  part  of  Nature  exists  beyond  me,  but  it 
does  not  exist  as  I  should  perceive  it.  And  we 
saw  clearly  that,  so  far,  common  sense  cannot  be 
satisfied.  But,  if  this  were  a  valid  objection,  I  do 
not  know  in  whose  mouth  it  would  hold  good.* 
And  if  any  one,  again,  goes  on  to  urge  that  Nature 
works  and  acts  on  us,  and  that  this  aspect  of  force 
is  ignored  by  our  theory,  we  need  not  answer  at 
length.  For  if  ultimate  reality  is  claimed  for  any 
thing  like  force,  we  have  disposed,  in  our  First  Book, 
of  that  claim  already,  But,  if  all  that  is  meant  is  a 
certain  behaviour  of  Nature,  with  certain  conse- 
quences   in   souls,    there    is    nothing   here    but    a 


'  If  Nature  were  more  in  itself,  could  it  be  more  to  us  ?  And 
is  it  for  our  sake,  or  for  the  sake  of  Nature,  that  the  objector  asks 
for  more?     Clearness  on  these  points  is  desirable. 

'  It  is  possible  that  some  follower  of  Berkeley  may  urge  that 
the  whole  of  Nature,  precisely  as  it  is  perceived  {and  felt  ?),  exists 
actually  in  God.  But  this  by  itself  is  not  a  metaphysical  view, 
[t  is  merely  a  delusive  attempt  to  do  without  one.  The  un- 
rationalized  heaping  up  of  such  a  congeries  within  the  Deity,  with 
its  (partial  i*)  reduplication  inside  finite  centres,  and  then  the 
relation  between  these  aspects  (or  divisions  ?)  of  the  whole — this 
is  an  effort  surely  not  to  solve  a  problem  but  simply  to  shelve  it. 


NATURE. 


283 


phenomenal  co-existence  and  sequence.  It  is  an 
order  and  way  in  which  events  happen,  and  in  our 
view  of  Nature  I  see  nothing  inconsistent  with  this 
arrangement.  From  the  fact  of  such  an  orderly 
appearance  you  cannot  infer  the  existence  of  some- 
thing not  contained  in  finite  experiences.' 

We  may  now  consider  a  question  which  several 
times  we  have  touched  on.     We  have  seen  that  in 
reality  there  can  be  no  mere  physical  Nature.      The 
world  of  physical  science  is  not  something  indepen- 
dent, but  is  a  mere  element  in  one  total  experience. 
And,  apart  from  finite  souls,  this  physical  world,  in 
the  proper  sense,  does  not  exist.      But,  if  so,  we  are 
led    to    ask,    what    becomes    of    natural    science  i*, 
Nature  there  is  treated  as  a  thing  without  soul  andi 
standing  by  its  own  strength.     And  we  thus  have  \ 
been  apparently  forced  into  collision  with  something 
beyond  criticism.      But  the  collision  is  illusive,  and 
exists   only   through   misunderstanding.      For  the 
object  of  natural  science  is  not  at  all   the  ascertain-  | 
ment  of  ultimate  truth,  and  its  province   does  not  ' 
fall  outside  phenomena.     The   ideas,  with  which  it 
works,  are  not  intended  to  set  out  the  true  character 
of  reality.     And,  therefore,  to  subject  these  ideas  to 
metaphysical   criticism,  or,  from  the  other  side,    to 
oppose  them  to  metaphysics,  is  to  mistake  their  end 
and    bearing.       The  question    is    not  whether  the 
principles  of  physical    science  possess    an    absolute 
truth  to  which  they  make  no  claim.     The  question 
is  whether  the  abstraction,  employed  by  that  science, 
is  legitimate  and  useful.     And  with  regard  to  that 
question  there  surely  can  be  no  doubt.      In  order  to 
understand   the  co-existence  and  sequence  of  phe- 
nomena, natural  science  makes  an  intellectual  con- 

^  I  admit  that  I  cannot  explain  how  Nature  comes  to  us  as  an 
order  (Chapters  xxiii.  and  xxvi.),  but  then  I  deny  that  any  other 
view  is  in  any  better  case.  The  subject  of  Ends  in  Nature  will 
be  considered  later. 


284 


REALITY. 


struction  of  their  conditions.  Its  matter,  motion, 
and  force  are  but  working  ideas,  used  to  understand 
the  occurrence  of  certain  events.  To  find  and 
systematize  the  ways  in  which  spatial  phenomena 
-/  are  connected  and  happen — this  is  all  the  marie 
which  these  conceptions  aim  at.  And  for  the 
metaphysician  to  urge  that  these  ideas  contradict 
themselves,  is  irrelevant  and  unfair.  To  object  that 
in  the  end  they  are  not  true,  is  to  mistake  their 
pretensions. 

And  thus  when  matter  is  treated  of  as  a  thing 
standing  in  its  own  right,  continuous  and  identical, 
metaphysics  is  not  concerned.  For,  in  order  to 
study  the  laws  of  a  class  of  phenomena,  these  phe- 
nomena are  simply  regarded  by  themselves.  The 
implication  of  Nature,  as  a  subordinate  element, 
within  souls  has  not  been  denied,  but  in  practice, 
and  for  practice,  ignored.  And,  when  we  hear  of  a 
time  before  organisms  existed,  that,  in  the  first  place, 
should  mean  organisms  of  the  kind  that  we  know  ; 
and  it  should  be  said  merely  with  regard  to  one 
part  of  the  Universe.  Or,  at  all  events,  it  is  not  a 
statement  of  the  actual  history  of  the  ultimate  Reality, 
but  is  a  convenient  method  of  considering  certain 
facts  apart  from  others.  And  thus,  while  metaphys- 
ics and  natural  science  keep  each  to  its  own  busi- 
ness, a  collision  is  impossible.  Neither  needs 
defence  against  the  other,  except  through  misunder- 
standing. 

But  that  misunderstandings  on  both  sides  have 
been  too  often  provoked  I  think  no  one  can  deny. 
Too  often  the  science  of  mere  Nature,  forgetting  its 
own  limits  and  false  to  its  true  aims,  attempts  to 
speak  about  first  principles.  It  becomes  trans- 
scendant,  and  offers  us  a  dogmatic  and  uncritical 
metaphysics.  Thus  to  assert  that,  in  the  history  of 
the  Universe  at  large,  matter  came  before  mind,  is 
to  place  development  and  succession  within  the 
Absolute  (Chapter  x.wi.),  and  is  to  make  real  outside 


NATURE. 


285 


the  Whole  a  mere  element  in  its  being.  And  such  a 
doctrine  not  only  is  nol  natural  science,  but,  even 
if  we  suppose  it  otherwise  to  have  any  value,  for 
that  science,  at  least,  it  is  worthless.  For  assume 
that  force  matter  and  motion  are  more  than  mere 
working  ideas,  inconsistent  but  useful — will  they,  on 
that  assumption,  work  better  ?  If  you,  after  all,  are 
going  to  use  them  solely  for  the  interpretation  of 
spatial  events,  then,  if  they  are  absolute  truth,  that 
is  nothing  to  you.  This  absolute  truth  you  must  in 
any  case  apply  as  a  mere  system  of  the  conditions 
of  the  occurrence  of  phenomena  ;  and  for  that  pur- 
pose anything,  which  you  apply,  is  the  same,  if  it 
does  the  same  work.  But,  I  think  the  failure  of 
natural  science  (so  far  as  it  does  fail)  to  maintain  its 
own  position,  is  not  hard  to  understand.  It  seems 
produced  by  more  than  one  cause.  There  is  first  a 
vague  notion  that  absolute  truth  must  be  pursued 
by  every  kind  of  special  science.  There  is  inability 
to  perceive  that,  in  such  a  science,  something  less  is 
all  that  we  can  use,  and  therefore  all  that  we  should 
want.  But  this  unfortunately  is  not  all.  For 
metaphysics  itself,  by  its  interference  with  physical 
science,  has  induced  that  to  act,  as  it  thinks,  in  self- 
defence,  and  has  led  it,  in  so  doing,  to  become 
metaphysical.  And  this  interference  of  metaphysics  I 
would  admit  and  deplore,  as  the  result  and  the  parent 
of  most  injurious  misunderstanding.  Not  only  have 
there  been  efforts  at  construction  which  have  led  to 
no  positive  result,  but  there  have  been  attacks  on 
the  sciences  which  have  pushed  into  abuse  a  legiti- 
mate function.  For,  as  against  natural  science,  the 
duty  of  metaphysics  is  limited.  So  long  as  that 
science  keeps  merely  to  the  sphere  of  phenomena 
and  the  laws  of  their  occurrence,  metaphysics  has 
no  right  to  a  single  word  of  criticism.  Criticism 
begins  when  what  is  relative — mere  ways  of  appear- 
ance— is,  unconsciously  or  consciously,  offered  as 
more.    And  I  do  not  doubt  that  there  are  doctrines. 


286 


REALITY. 


now  made  use  of  in  science,  which  on  this  ground 
invite  metaphysical  correction,  and  on  which  it 
might  here  be  instructive  to  dwell.  But  for  want 
of  competence  and  want  of  space,  and,  more  than 
all  perhaps  from  the  fear  of  being  misunderstood,  I 
think  it  better  to  pass  on.  There  are  further  ques- 
tions about  Nature  more  important  by  far  for  our 
general  enquiry. 


Is  the  extended  world  one,  and,  if  so,  in  what 
sense?  We  discussed,  in  Chapter  xviii.,  the  unity 
of  time,  and  it  is  needful  to  recall  the  conclu- 
sion we  reached.  We  agreed  that  all  times  have 
a  unity  in  the  Absolute,  but,  when  we  asked  if  that 
unity  itself  must  be  temporal,  our  answer  was  negat- 
ive. We  found  that  the  many  time- series  are  not 
related  in  time.  They  do  not  make  parts  of  one 
series  and  whole  of  succession  ;  but,  on  the  contrary, 
their  interrelation  and  unity  falls  outside  of  time. 
And,  in  the  case  of  extension,  the  like  considerations 
produce  a  like  result.  The  physical  world  is  not 
one  in  the  sense  of  possessing  a  physical  unity. 
There  may  be  any  number  of  material  worlds,  not 
related  in  space,  and  by  consequence  not  exclusive 
of,  and  repellent  to,  each  other. 
/     It  appears,  at  first,  as  if  all  the  extended  was  part 

/of  one  space.  For  all  spaces,  and,  if  so,  all  material 
objects,  seem  spatially  related.  And  such  an  inter- 
relation would,  of  course,  make  them  members  in 
one  extended  whole.  But  this  belief,  when  we  re- 
flect, begins  instantly  to  vanish.  Nature  in  my 
dreams  (for  example)  possesses  extension,  and  yet 

I  spatially  it  is  not  one  with  my  physical  world.  And 
in  imagination  and  in  thought  we  have  countless 
existences,  material  and  extended,  which  stand  in  no 
spatial  connection  with  each  other  or  with  the  world 
which  I  perceive.  And  it  is  idle  to  reply  that  these 
bodies  and  their  arrangements  are  unreal,  unless  we 
are  sure  of  the  sense  which  we  give  to  reality.     For 


NATURE. 


287 


that  these  all  exist  is  quite  clear ;  and,  if  they  have 
not  got  extension,  they  are  all  able,  at  least,  to 
appear  with  it  and  to  show  it.  Their  extension  and 
their  materiality  is,  in  short,  a  palpable  fact,  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  their  several  arrangements  are 
not  inter-related  in  space.  And,  since  in  the  Abso- 
lute these,  of  course,  possess  a  unity,  we  must 
conclude  that  the  unity  is  not  material.  In  coming 
together  their  extensional  character  is  transmuted. 
There  are  a  variety  of  spatial  systems,  independent 
of  each  other,  and  each  changed  beyond  itself,  when 
absorbed  in  the  one  non-spatial  system.  Thus,  with 
regard  to  their  unity,  Space  and  Time  have  similar 
characters  (pp.  210-214). 

That,  which  for  ordinary  purposes  I  call  "real" 
Nature,  is  the  extended  world  so  far  as  related  to 
my  body.  What  forms  a  spatial  system  with  that 
body  has  "real"  extension.  But  even  "my  body" 
is  ambiguous,  for  the  body,  which  I  imagine,  may 
have  no  spatial  relation  to  the  body  which  I  per- 
ceive. And  perception  too  can  be  illusive,  for  my  own 
body  in  dreams  is  not  the  same  thing  with  my  true 
"real"  body,  nor  does  it  enter  with  it  into  any  one 
spatial  arrangement.  And  what  in  the  end  I  mean 
by  my  "  real "  body,  seems  to  be  this.  I  make  a 
spatial  construction  from  my  body,  as  it  comes  to 
me  when  awake.  This  and  the  extended  which 
will  form  a  single  system  of  spatial  relations  together 
with  this,  I  consider  as  real.'  And  whatever  exten- 
sion falls  outside  of  this  one  system  of  interrelation, 


*  With  regard  to  the  past  and  future  of  my  "real"  body  and 
its  "real"  world,  it  is  hard  to  say  whether,  and  in  what  sense, 
these  are  supposed  to  have  spatial  connection  with  the  present. 
What  we  commonly  think  on  this  subject  is,  I  should  say,  a  mere 
mass  of  inconsistency.  There  is  another  point,  on  which  it  would 
be  interesting  to  develope  the  doctrine  of  the  text,  by  asking  how 
we  distinguish  our  waking  state.  But  an  answer  to  this  question 
is,  I  think,  not  called  for  here.  I  have  also  not  referred  to  in- 
sanity and  other  abnormal  states.  But  their  bearing  here  is 
4>bvious. 


288 


REALITY. 


I  set  down  as  "  imaginary."  And,  as  a  mere 
subordinate  point  of  view,  this  may  do  very  well. 
But  it  is  quite  another  thing  on  such  a  ground  to 
deny  existence  in  the  Absolute  to  every  other  spatial 
system.  For  we  have  the  "  imaginary "  extension 
on  our  hands  as  a  fact  which  remains,  and  which 
should  cause  us  to  hesitate.  And,  when  we  reflect, 
we  see  clearly  that  a  variety  of  physical  arrange- 
ments may  exist  without  anything  like  spatial  inter- 
relation. They  will  have  their  unity  in  the  Whole, 
but  no  connections  in  space  each  outside  its  own 
proper  system  of  matter.  And  Nature  therefore 
cannot  properly  be  called  a  single  world,  in  the 
sense  of  possessing  a  spatial  unity. 

Thus  we  might  have  any  number  of  physical 
systems,  standing  independent  of  spatial  relations 
with  each  other.  And  we  may  go  on  from  this  to 
consider  another  point  of  interest.  Such  diverse 
worlds  of  matter  might  to  any  extent  still  act  on 
and  influence  one  another.  But,  to  speak  strictly, 
they  could  not  inter-penetrate  at  any  point.  Their 
interaction,  however  intimate,  could  not  be  called 
penetration ;  though,  in  itself  and  in  its  effects,  it 
might  involve  a  closer  unity.  Their  spaces  always 
would  remain  apart,  and  spatial  contact  would  be 
impossible.  But  inside  each  world  the  case,  as  to 
penetration,  might  be  different.  The  penetration  of 
one  thing  by  another  might  there  even  be  usual ; 
and  I  will  try  to  show  briefly  that  this  presents  no 
difiiculty. 

The  idea  of  a  Nature  made  up  of  solid  matter, 
interspaced  with  an  absolute  void,  has  been  inherited, 
I  presume,  from  Greek  metaphysics.  And,  I  think, 
for  the  most  part  we  hardly  realize  how  entirely  this 
view  lies  at  the  mercy  of  criticism.  I  am  speaking, 
not  of  physics  and  the  principles  employed  by 
physics,  but  of  what  may  be  called  the  metaphysics 
of  the  literary  market-place.     And  the  notion  com- 


NATURE. 


389 


mon  there,  that  one  extended  thing  cannot  penetrate 
another,  rests  mainly  on  prejudice.  For  whether 
matter,  conceivably  and  possibly,  can  enter  into 
matter  or  not,  depends  entirely  on  the  sense  in 
which  matter  is  taken.  Penetration  means  the  abol- 
ition of  spatial  distinction,  and  we  may  hence  define 
matter  in  such  a  way  that,  with  loss  of  spatial  dis- 
tinction, itself  would  be  abolished.  If,  that  is  to 
say,  pieces  of  matter  are  so  one  thing  with  their 
e.xtensions  as,  apart  from  these,  to  keep  no  indi- 
vidual difference — then  these  pieces  obviously  can- 
not penetrate ;  but,  otherwise,  they  may.  This 
seems  to  me  clear,  and  1  will  go  on  to  explain  it 
shortly. 

It  is  certain  first  of  all  that  two  parts  of  one 
space  cannot  penetrate  each  other.  For,  fhough 
these  two  parts  must  have  some  qualities  beside 
their  mere  extension  (Chapter  iii.),  such  bare  qualities 
are  not  enough.  Even  if  you  sup])ose  that  a  change 
has  forced  both  sets  of  qualities  to  belong  to  one 
single  extension,  you  will  after  all  have  not  got  two 
extended  things  in  one.  For  you  will  not  have 
two  extended  things,  since  one  will  have  vanished. 
And,  hence,  penetration,  implying  the  existence  ol 
both,  has  become  a  word  without  meaning.  But 
the  case  is  altered,  if  we  consider  two  pieces  of  some 
element  more  concrete  than  space.  Let  us  assume 
with  these,  first,  that  their  other  qualities,  which 
serve  to  divide  and  distinguish  them,  still  depend 
on  extension — then,  so  far,  these  things  still  caimot 
penetrate  each  other.  For,  as  before,  in  the  one 
space  you  would  not  have  two  things,  since  (by  the 
assumption)  one  thing  has  lost  separate  existence. 
But  now  the  whole  question  is  whether  with  matter 
this  assumption  is  true,  whether  in  Nature,  that  is, 
qualities  are  actually  so  to  be  identified  with  exten- 
sion. And,  for  myself,  I  find  no  reason  to  think 
that  this  is  so.  If  in  two  parts  of  one  extended 
there  are  distinctions  sufficient  to  individualize,  and 
A.  R.  u 


: 


A 


290 


REALITY. 


to  keep  these  two  things  still  two,  when  their  separate 
spaces  are  gone — then  clearly  these  two  things  may 
be  compenetrable.  For  penetration  is  the  survival 
of  distinct  existence  notwithstanding  identification 
in  space.  And  thus  the  whole  question  really  turns 
on  the  possibility  of  such  a  survival.  Cannot,  in 
other  words,  two  things  still  be  two,  though  their 
extensions  have  become  one  ? 

We  have  no  right  then  (until  this  possibility  is 
got  rid  of)  to  take  the  parts  of  each  physical  world 
as  essentially  exclusive.  We  may  without  contra- 
diction consider  bodies  as  not  resisting  other  bodies. 
We  may  take  them  as  standing  towards  one  another, 
under  certain  conditions,  as  relative  vacua,  and  as 
freely,  compenetrable.  And,  if  in  this  way  we  gain 
no  positive  advantage,  we  at  least  escape  from  the 
absurdity,  and  even  the  scandal,  of  an  absolute 
vacuum.' 


We  have  seen  that,  except  in  the  Absolute  in 
which  Nature  is  merged,  we  have  no  right  to  assert 
that  all  Nature  has  unity.  I  will  now  add  a  few 
words  on  some  other  points  which  may  call  for  ex- 
planation. We  may  be  asked,  for  example,  whether 
Nature  is  finite  or  infinite ;  and  we  may  first  en- 
deavour to  clear  our  ideas  on  this  subject.  There 
is  of  course,  as  we  know,  a  great  difficulty  on  either 
side.  If  Nature  is  infinite,  we  have  the  absurdity 
of  a  something  which  exists,  and  still  does  not  exist. 
For  actual  existence  is,  obviously,  all  finite.      But, 

'  I  would  repeat  that  in  tlie  above  remarks  1  am  not  trying  to 
say  anything  against  the  ideas  used  in  physics,  and  against  the 
apparent  attempt  there  to  compromise  between  something  and 
nothing.  In  a  phenomenal  science  it  is  obvious  that  no  more 
ihan  a  relative  vacuum  is  wanted.  More  could  not  possibly  be 
used,  supposing  that  in  fact  more  existed.  In  any  case  for  meta- 
physics an  absolute  vacuum  is  nonsense.  Like  a  mere  piece  of 
empty  Time,  it  is  a  sheer  self-contradiction ;  for  it  presupposes 
certain  internal  distinctions,  and  then  in  the  same  breath  denies 
them. 


NATURE. 


291 


on  the  other  hand,  if  Nature  is  finite,  then  Nature 
must  have  an  end ;  and  this  again  is  impossible. 
For  a  limit  of  extension  must  be  relative  to  exten- 
sion beyond.  And  to  fall  back  on  empty  space,  will 
not  help  us  at  all.  For  this  {itself  a  mere  absurdity) 
repeats  the  dilemma  in  an  aggravated  form.  It  is 
itself  both  something  and  nothing,  is  essentially 
limited  and  yet,  on  the  other  side,  without  end. 

But  we  cannot  escape  the  conclusion  that  Nature 
is  infinite.  And  this  will  be  true  not  oi  our  physical 
system  alone,  but  of  every  other  extended  world 
which  can  possibly  exist.  None  is  limited  but  by 
an  end  over  which  it  is  constantly  in  the  act  of  pass- 
ing. Nor  does  this  hold  only  with  regard  to  present 
existence,  for  the  past  and  future  of  these  worlds  has 
also  no  fixed  boundary  in  space.  Nor,  once  again,  is 
this  a  character  peculiar  to  the  extended.  Wherever 
you  have  a  finite  whole,  made  up  of  qualities  and 
relations,  there  a  process  of  indefinite  transition 
beyond  its  limits  is  a  consequence.  And  with  the 
extended,  more  than  anything,  this  self- transcen- 
dence is  obvious.  Every  physical  world  is,  essen- 
tially and  necessarily,  infinite. 

But,  in  saying  this,  we  do  not  mean  that,  at  any 
given  moment,  such  worlds  possess  more  than  a 
given  amount  of  existence.  Such  an  assertion  once 
again  would  have  no  meaning.  It  would  be  once 
more  the  endeavour  to  be  something  and  yet  nothing, 
and  to  find  an  existence  which  does  not  exist.  And 
thus  we  are  forced  to  maintain  that  every  Nature 
must  be  finite.  The  dilemma  stares  us  in  the  face, 
and  brings  home  to  us  the  fact  that  all  Nature,  as 
such,  is  an  untrue  appearance.  It  is  the  way  in 
which  a  mere  part  of  the  Reality  shows  itself,  a  way 
essential  and  true  when  taken  up  into  and  trans- 
muted by  a  fuller  totality,  but,  considered  by  itself, 
inconsistent  and  lapsing  beyond  its  own  being.  The 
essence  of  the  relative  is  to  have  and  to  come  to  an 
end,  but,  at  the  same  time,  to  end  always  in  a  self- 


292 


REALITY. 


contradiction.  Again  the  infinity  of  Nature,  its 
extension  beyond  ail  limits,  we  might  call  Nature's 
effort  to  end  itself  as  Nature.  It  shows  in  this  its 
ideality,  its  instability  and  transitoriness,  and  its 
constant  passage  of  itself  into  that  which  trans- 
cends it.  In  its  isolation  as  a  phenomenon  Nature 
is  both  finite  and  infinite,  and  so  proclaims  itself 
untrue.  And,  when  this  contradiction  is  solved, 
both  its  characters  disappear  into  something  beyond 
both.  And  it  is  perhaps  not  necessary  to  dwell 
further  on  the  infinity  of  Nature. 

And,  passing  ne.xt  to  the  question  of  what  is 
called  Uniformity,  I  shall  dismiss  this  almost  at 
once.  For  there  is,  in  part,  no  necessity  for  meta- 
jihysics  to  deal  with  it,  and,  in  part,  we  must  return 
to  it  in  the  following  chapter.  But,  however  uni- 
formity is  understood,  in  the  main  we  must  be 
.sceptical,  and  stand  aloof.  I  do  not  see  how  it  can 
be  shown  that  the  amount  of  matter  and  motion, 
whether  in  any  one  world  or  in  all,  remains  always 
the  same.  Nor  do  I  understand  how  we  can  know 
that  any  world  remains  the  same  in  its  sensible 
quaHties.  As  long  as,  on  the  one  side,  the  Absolute 
preserves  its  identity,  and,  on  the  other  side,  the 
realms  of  phenomena  remain  in  order,  all  our  postul- 
;ites  are  satisfied.  This  order  in  the  world  need 
not  mean  that,  in  each  Nature,  the  same  characters 
remain.  It  implies,  in  the  first  place,  that  all  changes 
are  subject  to  the  identity  of  the  one  Reality.  But 
that  by  itself  seems  consistent  with  almost  indefinite 
variation  in  the  several  worlds.  And,  in  the  second 
place,  order  must  involve  the  possibility  of  experience 
in  finite  subjects.  Order,  therefore,  excludes  all 
change  which  would  make  each  world  unintelligible 
through  want  of  stability.  But  this  stability,  in  the 
end,  does  not  seem  to  require  more  than  a  limited 
amount  of  identity,  existing  from  time  to  time  in 
the    sensations    which    happen.       And,    thirdly,    in 


NATURE. 


293 


phenomenal  sequence  the  law  of  Causation  must 
remain  unbroken.  But  this,  again,  comes  to  very 
little.  For  the  law  of  Causation  does  not  assert 
that  in  existence  we  have  always  the  same  causes 
and  effects.  It  insists  only  that,  given  one,  we  must 
inevitably  have  the  other.  And  thus  the  Uniformity 
of  Nature  cannot  warrant  the  assumption  that  the 
world  of  sense  is  uniform.  Its  guarantee  is  in  that 
respect  partly  non-e.xistent,  and  partly  hypothetical.' 

There  are  other  questions  as  to  Nature  which  will 
engage  us  later  on,  and  we  may  here  bring  the 
present  chapter  to  a  close.  We  have  found  that 
Nature  by  itself  has  no  reality.  It  exists  only  as  a 
form  of  appearance  within  the  Absolute.  In  its 
isolation  from  that  whole  of  feeling  and  e.xperience 
it  is  an  untrue  abstraction  ;  and  in  life  this  narrow 
view  of  Nature  (as  we  saw)  is  not  consistently 
maintained.  But,  for  physical  science,  the  separa- 
tion of  one  element  from  the  whole  is  both  justifi- 
able and  necessary.  In  order  to  understand  the  co- 
existence and  sequence  of  phenomena  in  space,  the 
conditions  of  these  are  made  objects  of  independent  j 
study.  But  to  take  such  conditions  for  hard  reali- 
ties standing  by  themselves,  is  to  deviate  into 
uncritical  and  barbarous  metaphysics. 

Nature  apart  from  and  outside  of  the  Absolute  is 
nothing.  It  has  its  being  in  that  process  of  intestine 
division,  through  which  the  whole  world  of  appear- 
ance consists.  And  in  this  realm,  where  aspects  fall 
asunder,  where  being  is  distinguished  from  thought, 
and  the  self  from  the  not-self,  Nature  marks  one 
extreme.  It  is  the  aspect  most  opposed  to  self-  ( 
dependence  and  unity.  It  is  the  world  of  those' 
particulars  which  stand  furthest  from  possessing 
individuality,  and  we  may  call  it  the  region  of 
externality  and  chance.      Compulsion  from  the  out- 


*  For  a  further  consideration  of  these  points  see  Chapter  xxiii. 


294  REALITY. 

side,  and  a  movement  not  their  own,  is  the  law  of 
its  elements ;  and  its  events  seem  devoid  of  an  in- 
ternal meaning.  To  exist  and  to  happen,  and  yet 
not  to  realize  an  end,  or  as  a  member  to  subserve 
some  ideal  whole,  we  saw  (Chapter  xix.)  was  to  be 
contingent.  And  in  the  mere  physical  world  the 
nearest  approach  to  this  character  can  be  found 
But  we  can  deal  better  with  such  questions  in  a 
later  context  We  shall  have  hereafter  to  discuss 
the  connection  of  soul  with  body,  and  the  existence 
of  a  system  of  ends  in  Nature.  The  work  of  this 
chapter  has  been  done,  if  we  have  been  able  to  show 
the  subordination  of  Nature  as  one  element  within 
the  Whole. 


CHAPTER  XXIIl. 

BODY  AND  SOUL. 

With  the  subject  of  this  chapter  we  seem  to  have 
arrived  at  a  hopeless  difliculty.  The  relation  of 
body  to  soul  presents  a  problem  which  experience 
seems  to  sliow  is  really  not  soluble.  And  I  may  say 
at  once  that  I  accept  and  endorse  this  result.  It 
seems  to  me  Impossible  to  explain  how  precisely,  in 
the  end,  these  two  forms  of  existence  stand  one  to 
the  other.  But  in  this  inability  I  find  a  confirmation 
of  our  general  doctrine  as  to  the  nature  of  Reality. 
For  body  and  soul  are  mere  appearances,  distinc-  / 
tions  set  up  and  held  apart  in  the  Whole.  And  ' 
fully  to  understand  the  relation  between  them  would 
be,  in  the  end,  to  grasp  how  they  came  together  into 
one.  And,  since  this  is  impossible  for  our  know- 
ledge, any  view  about  their  connection  remains  im- 
perfect. 

But  this  failure  to  comprehend  gives  no  ground 
for  an  objection  against  our  Absolute.  It  is  no  dis- 
proof of  a  theory  (1  must  repeat  this)  that,  before 
some  questions  as  to  "  How,"  it  is  forced  to  remain 
dumb.  For  you  do  not  throw  doubt  on  a  view  till 
you  find  inconsistency.  If  the  general  account  is 
such  that  it  is  bound  to  solve  this  or  that  problem, 
then  such  a  problem,  left  outside,  is  a  serious  objec- 
tion. Anil  things  are  still  wprse  where  there  are 
aspects  which  positively  collide  with  the  main  con- 
clusion. But  neither  of  these  grounds  of  objection 
holds  good  against  ourselves.  Upon  the  view, 
which  we  have  found  to  be  true  of  the  Absolute,  we 

'95 


296 


REALITY, 


can  see  how  and  why  some  questions  cannot  possibly 
be  answered.  And  in  particular  this  relation  of 
body  and  soul  offers  nothing  inconsistent  with  our 
Itfeneral  doctrhie.  My  principal  object  here  will  be 
to  make  this  last  point  good.  And  we  shall  find 
that  neither  body  nor  soul,  nor  the  connection 
between  them,  can  furnish  any  ground  of  objection 
against  our  Absolute. 

The  difficulties,  which  have  arisen,  are  due  mainly 
to  one  cause.  Body  and  soul  have  been  set  up  as 
independent  realities..  They  have  been  taken  to  be 
things,  whose  kinds  are  different,  and  which  have 
existence  each  by  itself,  and  each  in  its  own  right. 
And  then,  of  course,  their  connection  becomes  in- 
comprehensible, and  we  strive  in  vain  to  see  how 
one  can  inHuence  the  other.  And  at  last,  disgusted 
by  our  failure,  we  perhaps  resolve  to  deny  wholly 
ihe  existence  of  this  influence.  We  may  take  refuge 
in  two  series  of  indifferent  events,  which  seem  to 
affect  one  another  while,  in  fact,  merely  running 
side  by  side.  And,  because  their  conjunction  can 
scarcely  be  bare  coincidence,  we  are  driven,  after 
all,  to  admit  some  kind  of  connection.  The  connec- 
tion is  now  viewed  as  indirect,  and  as  dependent  on 
something  else  to  which  both  series  belong.  But, 
while  each  side  retains  its  reality  and  self-subsist- 
ence, they,  of  course,  cannot  come  together  ;  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  if  they  come  together,  it  is  be- 
cause they  have  beeii  transformed,  and  are  not 
things,  but  appearances.  Still  this  last  is  a  con- 
clusion for  which  many  of  us  are  not  prepared.  If 
soul  and  body  are  not  two  "  things,"  the  mistake, 
we  fancy,  has  lain  wholly  on  the  side  of  the  soul. 
For  the  body  at  all  events  seems  a  thing,  while  the 
soul  is  unsubstantial.  And  so,  dropping  influence 
altogether,  we  make  the  soul  a  kind  of  adjective 
supported  by  the  body.  Or,  since,  after  all,  adjec- 
tives must  qualify  their  substantives,  we  turn  the 
soul  into  a  kind  of  immaterial  secretion,  ejected  and, 


BODY    AND    SOUL.  297 

because  "  out,"  making  no  difference  to  the  organ. 
Nor  do  we  always  desert  this  view  when  "  matter  " 
has  itself  been  discovered  to  be  merely  phenomenal. 
It  is  common  first  to  admit  that  body  is  mere 
sensation  and  idea,  and  still  to  treat  it  as  wholly 
independent  of  the  soul,  while  the  soul  remains  its 
non-physical  and  irrelevant  secretion. 

But  1  shall  make  no  attempt  to  state  the  various 
theories  as  to  the  nature  and  relations  of  body  and 
soul,  and  I  shall  not  criticise  in  detail  views,  from 
most  of  which  we  could  learn  nothing.  It  will  be 
clear  at  once,  from  the  results  of  preceding  chapters, 
that  neither  body  nor  soul  can  be  more  than  appear- 
ance. And  I  will  attempt  forthwith  to  point  outj 
the  peculiar  nature  of  each,  and  the  manner  in  which/ 
they  are  connected  with,  and  influence,  each  other^ 
It  would  be  useless  to  touch  the  second  question, 
until  we  have  endeavoured  to  get  our  minds  clear 
on  the  first. 


What  is  a  body.-*     In  our  last  chapter  we  have  \ 
anticipated  the  answer.      A  body  is  a  part  of  the    ) 
physical  world,  and  we  have  seen   that    Nature  by  / 
itself  is  wholly   unreal.      It   was  an  aspect  of  the' 
Whole,  set  apart  by  abstraction,  and,  for  some  pur- 
poses,   taken    as    independent    reality.     So  that,  in 
saying  that  a  body  is  one  piece  of  Nature,  we  have 
at  once  pointed  out  that  it  is  no  more  than  appear- 
ance.     It    is    an    intellectual    construction    out    of  \ 
material   which    is  not   self-subsistent.      This  is  its    1 
general  character  as  physical ;  but,  as  to  the  special 
position  given  to  the  organic  by  natural   science,    I 
prefer  to  say  nothing.     It  is,  for  us,  an  (undefined) 
arrangement  possessing  temporal  continuity,'  and  a 
certain  amount  of  identity   in  quality,  the    degree  ' 
and  nature  of  which  last    I    cannot   attempt  to  fix.  / 

'  I  shall  have  to  say  something  more  on  this  point  lower  down. 
The  bodies  which  we  know  have  also  continuity  in  space.  Whether 
this  is  essential  will  be  discussed  hereafter. 


298 


REALITY. 


And  I  think,  for  metaphysics,  it  is  better  also  to 
make  relation  to  a  soul  essential  for  a  body  (Chapter 
xxii.).  But  wha't  concerns  us  at  this  moment  is, 
rather,  to  insist  on  its  phenomenal  character.  The 
materials,  of  which  it  is  made,  are  inseparably 
implicated  with  sensation  and  feeling.  They  are 
divorced  from  this  given  whole  by  a  process, 
which  is  necessary,  but  yet  is  full  of  contradictions. 
The  physical  world,  taken  as  separate,  involves  the 
relation  of  unknown  to  unknown,  and  of  these  make- 
shift materials  the  particular  body  is  built.  It  is  a 
construction  riddled  by  inconsistencies,  a  working 
point  of  view,  which  is  of  course  quite  indispensable, 
but  which  cannot  justify  a  claim  to  be  more  than 
appearance. 

And  the  soul  is    clearly  no    more  self-subsistent 
than   the  body.       It   is,  on   its  side  also,  a    purely  \ 
phenomenal    existence,    an    appearance    incomplete  \ 
and   inconsistent,  and   with    no  power  to  maintain  / 
itself  as  an  independent  "thing."     The  criticism  of/ 
our    First    Book  has  destroyed   every  claim  of  the^ 
self  to  be,  or  to  correspond   to,  true  reality.     And 
the  only  task  here  before  us  is,  accepting  this  result, 
to  attempt  to  fix  clearly  the  meaning  of  a  soul.      I 
will  first  make  a  brief  statement,  and  then  endeavour 
to  explain   it  and   to  defend   it    against   objections. 
The  soul'  is  a  finite  centre  of  immediate  e.xperience,  \ 
possessed  of  a  certain  temporal  continuity  of  exist- / 
ence,  and  again  of  a  certain   identity  in  character/ 
And    the   word    "  immediate "     is  emphatic.      The 
soul  is  a  particular  group  of  psychical  events,  so  far 
as  these  events  are  taken   merely  as  happening  in 
time.      It  excludes  consideration  of  their  content,  so^ 
far  as  this  content  (whether  in  thought  or  volition  or 
feeling)  qualifies  something  beyond  the  serial  exist- 
•ence  of  these  events.    Take  the  whole  experience  of 

'  Cp.  Mind,  Xll.  355. 


BODY    AND    SOUL. 


299 


•any  moment,  one  entire  "  this-now, "  as  it  comes, 
regard  that  experience  as  changed  and  as  continued 
in  time,  consider  its  character  solely  as  happening, 
and,  again,  as  further  inlluencing  the  course  of  its 
own  changes — this  is  perhaps  the  readiest  way  of 
defining  a  soul.'  But  I  must  endeavour  to  draw 
this  out,  and  briefly  to  explain  it. 

It  is  not  enough  to  be  clear  that  the  soul  is  pheno- 
menal, in  the  sense  of  being  somethini^  which,  as 
such,  fails  to  reach  true  reality.  For,  unless  we 
perceive  to  some  extent  how  it  stands  towards  other 
sides  of  the  Universe,  we  are  likely  to  end  in  com- 
plete bewilderment.  And  a  frequent  error  is  to 
define  what  is  "  psychical  "  so  widely  as  to  exclude 
any  chance  of  a  rational  result.  For  aU  objects  and 
aims,  which  come  before  me,  are  in  one  sense  the 
states  of  my  soul.  Hence,  if  this  sense  is  not  ex- 
eluded,  my  body  and  the  whole  world  become 
"psychical"  phenomena;  and  amid  this  confusion 
my  soul  itself  seeks  an  unintelligible  place  as  one 
state  of  itself  What  is  most  important  is  to  dis- 
tinguish the  soul's  existence  from  what  tills  it,  and 
yet  there  are  few  points,  perhaps,  on  which  neglect 
is  more  common.  And  we  may  bring  the  question 
home  thus.  If  we  were  to  assume  (Chapter  x.wii.) 
that  in  the  Universe  there  is  nothing  beyond  souls, 
still  within  these  souls  the  same  problem  would  call 
for  solution.  We  should  still  have  to  find  a  place 
for  the  existence  of  soul,  as  distinct  both  from  body 
and  from  other  aspects  of  the  world. 

It  may  assist  us  in  perceiving  both  what  the  soul 
is,  and  again  what  it  is  not,  if  we  view  the  question 
from  two  sides.  Let  us  look  at  it,  first,  from  the 
■experience  of  an  individual  person,  and  then,  after- 
wards, let  us  consider  the  same  thing  from  outside, 

*  I  have  for  the  moment  excluded  relation  to  a  body.  It  is 
better  not  to  define  the  soul  as  "  the  facts  immediately  experi- 
•enced  within  one  organism  "  fur  several  reasons.  I  shall  return 
•to  this  point. 


300 


REAUTV. 


and  from  the  ground  of  an  admitted    plurality  of 
souls. 

If  then,  beginning  from  within,  I  take  my  whole 
given  experience  at  any  one  moment,  and  if  I  regard 
a  single  "  this-now,"  as  it  comes  in  feeh'ng  and  is 
"  mine,"^may  I  suppose  that  in  this  I  have  found 
my  true  soul  ?  Clearly  not  so,  for  (to  go  no  farther) 
such  existence  is  too  fleeting.  My  soul  (I  should 
reply)  is  not  merely  the  something  of  one  moment^ 
but  it  must  endure  for  a  time  and  must  preserve  its 
self-sameness.  1  do  not  mean  that  it  must  itself  be 
self-conscious  of  identity,  for  that  assertion  would 
carry  us  too  far  on  the  other  side.  And  as  to  the 
amount  of  continuity  and  of  self-same  character 
which  is  wanted,  I  am  saying  nothing  here.  I  shall 
touch  later  on  both  these  questions,  so  far  as  is 
necessary,  and  for  the  present  will  confine  myself  to 
the  genera!  result.  The  existence  of  a  soul  must 
endure  through  more  than  one  presentation  ;  and 
hence  experience,  if  immediate  and  given  and  not 
transcending  the  moment,  is  less  than  my  soul. 

But  if,  still  keeping  to  "  experience,"  we  take  it 
in  another  sense,  we  none  the  less  are  thwarted. 
For  experience  now  is  as*  much  too  wide  as  before  it 
was  too  narrow.  The  whole  contents  of  my  ex- 
perience— it  makes  no  difference  here  whether  I 
myself  or  another  person  considers  them — cannot 
possibly  be  my  soul,  unless  my  soul  is  to  be  as  large 
as  the  total  Universe.  For  other  bodies  and  souls, 
and  God  himself,  are  (so  far  as  I  know  them)  all 
states  of  my  mind,  and  in  this  sense  make  part  of 
my  particular  being.  And  we  are  led  at  once  ta 
the  distinction,  which  we  noticed  before  (Chapter 
xxi.),  between  the  diverse  aspects  of  content  and 
of  psychical  existence.  Our  experience  in  short  is, 
essentially  and  very  largely,  ideal.  It  shows  an  ideal 
process  which,  beginning  from  the  unity  of  feeling, 
produces  the  differences  of  self  and  not-self,  and 
separates  the  divisions  of  the  world  from  themselves 


KODY    AND    SOUL. 


^OI 


and  from  me.'  Ail  this  wealth,  that  is,  subsists 
through  a  divorce  between  the  sides  of  existence 
and  character.  What  is  meant  by  any  one  of  the 
portions  of  my  world  is  emphatically  not  a  mere  fact 
of  experience.  If  you  take  it  there,  as  it  exists 
there,  it  always  is  something,  but  this  something  can 
never  be  the  object  in  question.  We  may  use 
as  an  example  (if  you  please)  my  horse  or  my  own 
body.  Both  of  these  must,  for  me  at  least,  be 
nothing  but  "  experience  "  ;  for,  what  I  do  not  "ex- 
perience," to  me  .must  be  nothing.  And,  if  you-  push 
home  the  question  as  to  their  given  existence,  you  can 
find  it  nowhere  except  in  a  state  of  my  soul.  When 
1  perceive  them,  or  think  of  them,  there  is,  so  far,  no 
d  i.scoverable  "fact"  outside  of  my  psychical  condition. 
But  such  a  "  fact "  is  for  me  not  the  "  fact  "  of  my 
horse  or,  again,  of  my  body.  Their  true  existence 
is  not  that  which  is  present  in  my  mind,  but  rather, 
as  perhaps  we  should  say,  present  to  it,  Their  ex- 
istence is  a  content  which  works  a[jart  from,  and  is 
irreconcilable  with,  its  own  psychical  being  ;  it  is  a 
"what"  discrepant  with,  and  transcending  its  "that." 
We  may  put  it  shortly  by  saying  that  the  true  fact 
is  fact,  only  so  far  as  it  is  ideal.  Hence  the  Universe 
and  its  objects  must  not  be  called  states  of  my  soul. 
Indeed  it  would  be  better  to  affirm  that  these  objects 
exist,  so  far  as  the  psychical  states  do  not  exist.  For 
such  experience  of  objects  is  possible,  only  so  far 
as  the  meanintr  breaks  loose  from  the  given  existence, 
and  has,  so  regarded,  broken  this  existence  in  pieces. 
And  we  may  state  the  conclusion  thus.  If  my 
psychical  state  does  not  exist,  then  the  object  is 
destroyed ;  but,  again,  unless  my  state  could,  as 
such,  perish,  no  object  would  exist.  The  two  sides 
of  fact,  and  of  content  working  loose  from  that  fact, 
are  essential  to  each  other.  But  the  essence  of  the 
second  is  disruption  of  a  "what"  from  a   "that," 

'  I    have   tried  to   sketch    the    main   developmeiu   in   Mind, 
as  referred  to  above. 


?02 


REALITY. 


while  in  the  union  of  these  aspects  the  former  has  its 
life. 

The  soul  is  not  the  contents  which  appear  in  its 
states,  but,  on  the  other  liand,  without  them  it  would 
not  be  itself.  For  it  is  qualified  essentially  by  the 
presence  of  these  contents.  Thus  a  man,  we  may  say, 
is  not  what  he  thinks  of ;  and  yet  he  is  the  man  he 
is,  because  of  what  he  thinks  of  And  the  ideal 
processes  of  the  content  have  necessarily  an  aspect 
of  psychical  change.  Those  connections,  which  have 
nothing  which  is  personal  to  myself  cause  a  sequence 
of  my  states  when  they  happen  within  me.  Thus  a 
principle,  of  logic  or  morality,  works  in  my  mind. 
This  principle  is  most  certainly  not  a  part  of  my 
soul,  and  yet  it  makes  a  great  difference  to  the 
sequence  of  my  states.  I  shall  hereafter  return  to 
this  point,  but  it  would  belong  to  psychology  to 
developc  the  subject  in  detail.  We  should  have 
there  to  point  out,  and  to  classify,  the  causes  which 
affect  the  succession  of  psychical  phenomena.'  It  is 
enough  here  to  have  laid  stress  on  an  essentia' 
distinction.  Ideal  contents  appear  in,  and  affect 
my  existence,  but  still,  for  all  that,  we  cannot  cal 
them  my  soul. 

We  have  now  been  led  to  two  results.    The  soul  is 
certainly  not  all  that  which  is  present  in  experience, 
nor,  on  the  other  hand,  can  it  consist  in  mere  expe- 
rience itself     It  cannot  be  actual  feeling,  or  that  im- 
mediate unity  of  quality  and  being  which  comes  in  the 
"this"  (Chapter  xix.).     The  soul  is  not  these  things^ 
and  we  must  now  try  to  say  what  it  is.     It  is  one  of 
these  same  personal  centres,  not  taken  at  an  instant^ 
but  regarded  as  a  "thing."     It  is  a  feeling  whole 
which  is  considered   to  continue   in    time,    and    to 
maintain    a    certain    sameness.       And    the  soul    is,. 
therefore,  not   presented  fact,  but  is  an  ideal   con- 
struction which    transcends  what    is   given.       It  is 


i 


'  I  have  said  something  on  this  in  Mind,  XII.  362-3. 


BODY   AND    SOUL, 


303 


emphatically  the  result  of  an  ideal  process ;  but  this  \ 
process,  on  the  other  hand,  has  been  arbitrarily  \ 
arrested  at  a  very  low  point.  Take  a  fleeting 
moment  of  your  "  given,"  and  then,  from  the  basis 
of  a  personal  identity  of  feeling,  enlarge  this  moment 
by  other  moments  and  build  up  a  "  thing."  Idealize 
"  experience,"  so  as  to  make  its  past  one  reality 
with  its  present,  and  so  as  to  give  its  history  a  place 
in  the  fixed  temporal  order.  Resolve  its  contingency 
enoutJ[h  to  view  it  as  a  series  of  events,  which  have 
causal  connections  both  without  and  within.  But, 
having  gone  so  far,  pause,  and  call  a  halt  to  your 
process,  or,  having  got  to  a  soul,  you  will  be  hurried 
beyond  it.  And,  to  keep  your  soul,  you  must 
remain  fixed  in  a  posture  of  inconsistency.  For, 
like  every  other  "  thing  "  in  time,  the  soul  is  essen- 
tially ideal.  It  has  transcended  the  given  moment, 
and  has  spread  out  its  existence  beyond  that  which 
is  "  actual  "  or  could  ever  be  experienced.  And  by 
its  relations  "and  connections  of  coe.\istence  and 
sequence,  and  by  its  subjection  to  "  laws,"  it  h^ 
raised  itself  into  the  world  of  eternal  verity.  But 
to  persist  in  this  process  of  life  would  be  suicide. 
Its  advance  would  force  you  to  lose  hold  altogether 
on  "  existence,"  and,  with  that  loss,  to  forfeit  indi- 
vidual selfness.  And  hence,  on  the  other  side,  the 
soul  clings  to  its  being  in  time,  and  still  reaches 
after  the  unbroken  unity  of  content  with  reality. 
Its  contents,  therefore,  are  allowed  only  to  qualify 
the  series  of  temporal  events.  And  this  result  is  a 
mere  compromise.  Hence  the  soul  persists  through 
a  contrivance,  and  through  the  application  of  matter 
to  a  particular  purpose.  And,  because  this  applica- 
tion is  founded  on  and  limited  by  no  principle,  the 
soul  in  the  end  must  be  judged  to  be  rooted  in 
artifice.  It  is  a  series,  which  depends  on  ideal 
transcendence,  and  yet  desires  to  be  taken  as  sensible 
fact.  And  its  inconsistency  is  now  made  manifest 
in  its  use  of  its  contents,     These  (we  have  seen)  are 


I 


304 


REALITY. 


as  wide  as  the  Universe  itself,  and,  on  this  account, 
they  are  unable  to  qualify  the  soul.  And  yet,  on 
the  other  hand,  they  must  do  so,  if  the  soul  is  to 
have  the  quality  which  makes  it  itself.  Hence  these 
contents  must  be  taken  from  one  side  of  their  being, 
and  the  other  side^  for  a  particular  end,  is  struck 
out.  In  order  for  the  soul  to  exist,  "experience" 
must  be  mutilated.  It  must  be  regarded  so  far  as  it 
makes  a  difference  to  that  series  of  events  which  is 
taken  as  a  soul;  it  must  be  considered  just  to  that  ex- 
tent to  which  it  serves  as  the  adjective  of  a  temporal 
series — serves  to  make  the  "  thisness  "  of  the  series 
of  a  certain  kind,  and  to  modify  its  past  and  its  future 
"  thisness."  But,  beyond  this,  experience  is  taken 
merely  to  be  present  to  the  soul  and  operative  within 
it.  And  the  soul  exists  precisely  so  far  as  the  ab- 
straction is  maintained.  Its  life  endures  only  so  lony 
as  a  particular  purpose  holds.  And  thus  it  consists 
in  a  convenient  but  one-sided  representation  of  facts. 
and  has  no  claim  to  be  more  than  a  useful  appear- 
ance. 

In  brief,  because  the  existence  of  the  soul  is  not 
experienced  and  not  j,nven,  because  it  is  made  by, 
and  consists  in,  transcendence  of  the  '*  present," 
and  because  Its  content  is  obviously  never  one 
with  its  being,  its  "what"  always  in  llayrant  dis- 
crepancy with  its  "  that  " — therefore  its  whole  posi- 
tion is  throughout  inconsistent  and  untenable.  It  is 
an  arrangement  natural  and  necessary,  but  for  all 
that  phenomenal  and  illusive,  a  makeshift  valuable, 
but  still  not  genuine  reality.  And,  looked  at  by 
itself,  the  soul  is  an  abstraction  and  mutilation.  It 
is  the  arbitrary  use  of  material  for  a  particular  pur- 
pose. And  it  persists  only  by  refusing  to  see  more 
in  itself  than  subserves  its  own  existence. 


It  may  be  instructive,  before  we  go  on,  to  regard 
the  same  question  from  the  side  of  the  Absolute. 
Let  us,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  assume  that  in 


BODY   AND   SOUL. 


the  Whole  there  is  no  material  which  is  not  a  state 
of  some  soul  (Chapter  xxvii).  From  this  we 
might  be  tempted  to  conclude  that  these  souls  are 
the  Reality,  or  at  least  must  be  real  But  that 
conclusion  would  be  false,  for  the  souls  would  fail 
within  the  realm  of  appearance  and  error.  They 
would  be,  but,  as  such,  they  would  not  have  reality. 
They  would  require  a  resolution  and  a  re-composi- 
tion, in  which  their  individualities  would  be  trans- 
muted and  absorbed  (Chapter  .xvi.).  For  we  have 
seen  that  the  Absolute  is  the  union  of  content  and 
existence.  It  stands  at  a  level  above,  and  com- 
prehendinfj,  those  distinctions  and  relations  in  which 
the  imperfect  unity  of  feeling  is  dissipated.  Let  us 
then  take  the  indefinite  plurality  of  the  ''  this-nows," 
or  immediate  experiences,  as  the  basis  and  starting- 
point,  and,  on  the  other  side,  let  us  take  the  Absolute 
as  the  end,  and  let  us  view  the  region  between  as  a 
process  from  the  first  to  the  second.  It  will  be  a 
field  of  struggle  in  which  content  is  divorced  from, 
and  strives  once  more  towards,  unity  with  being. 
Our  assumption  in  part  will  be  false,  since  (as  we 
have  seen)  the  immediately  given  is  already  incon- 
sistent.' But,  in  order  to  instruct  ourselves,  let  us 
suppose  here  that  the  "  fact "  of  experience  is  real, 
and  that,  above  it  once  more,  the  Absolute  gains 
higher  reality — still  where  is  the  soul  i*  The  soul  is 
not  immediate  experience,  for  that  comes  given  at 
one  moment ;  and  the  soul  still  less  can  be  the 
perfected  union  of  all  being  and  content.  This  is 
obvious,  and,  if  so,  the  soul  must  fall  in  the  middle- 
space  of  error  and  appearance.  It  is  the  ideal 
manufacture  of  one  extreme  with  a  view  to  reach 
the  other,  a  manufacture  suspended  at  a  very  low 
stage,  and  suspended  on  no  defensible  ground. 
The  plurality  of  souls  in  the  Absolute  is,  therefore, 
appearance,  and  their  existence  is  not  genuine.    But 


A.  R. 


Compare  Chapters  xv.,  xix.,  xxi. 


3o6 


because  the  upward  struggle  of  the  content  to  ideal 
perfection,  having  made  these  souls,  still  rises  both 
in  them  and  above  them,  they,  in  themselves,  are 
nearer  the  level  of  the  lower  reality.  The  first  and 
transitory  union  of  existence  and  content  is,  with 
souls,  less  profoundly  broken  up  and  destroyed. 
And  hence  souls,  taken  as  things  with  a  place  in 
the  time-series,  are  said  to  be  facts  and  actually  to 
exist.  Nay  on  their  existence,  in  a  sense,  all  reality 
depends.  For  the  higher  process  is  carried  on  in  a 
special  relation  with  these  lower  results ;  and  thus, 
while  moving  in  lis  way,  it  affects  the  souls  in  (/teir 
way  ;  and  thus  everything  happens  in  souls,  and 
everything  is  their  states.  And  this  arrangement 
seems  necessary  ;  but  on  the  other  hand,  if  we  view 
it  from  the  side  of  the  Absolute,  it  is  plainly  self- 
inconsistent.  To  gain  consistency  and  truth  it  must 
be  merged,  and  recomposed  in  a  result  in  which 
its  specialty  must  vanish.  Souls,  like  their  bodies, 
are,  as  such,  nothing  more  than  appearance. 

And,  that  we  may  realize  this  more  clearly,  we  find 
ourselves  turning  in  a  circular  maze.  Just  as  the 
body  was  for  Nature,  and  upon  the  other  hand 
Nature  merely  through  relation  to  a  body,  so  in  a 
different  fashion  it  is  with  the  soul.  For  thought  is 
a  state  of  souls,  and  therefore  is  made  by  them, 
while,  upon  its  side,  the  soul  is  a  product  of  thought. 
The  "thing,"  existing  in  time  and  possessor  of 
"  states,"  Is  made  what  It  is  by  ideal  construction. 
But  this  construction  itself  appears  to  depend  on  a 
psychical  centre,  and  to  exist  merely  as  its  "  state." 
And  such  a  circle  seems  vicious.  Again,  the  body 
is  dependent  on  the  soul,  for  the  whole  of  its 
material  comes  by  way  of  sensation,  and  its  identity 
Is  built  up  by  ideal  construction.  And  yet  this 
manufacture  takes  place  as  an  event  in  a  soul,  a  soul 
which,  further,  exists  only  in  relation  to  a  body.' 

'  I  am  not  denying  here  the  possibility  of  soul  without  body. 
See  below,  p.  340. 


BODY    AND    SOUL. 


307 


But,  where  we  move  in  circles  like  these,  and  where, 
pushing  home  our  enquiries,  we  can  find  nothing  but 
the  relation  of  unknown  to  unknown — the  conclusion 
is  certain.  We  are  in  the  realm  of  appearance,  of 
phenomena  made  by  disruption  of  content  from 
being,  arrangements  which  may  represent,  but  which 
are  not,  reality.  Such  ways  of  understanding  are 
forced  on  us  by  the  nature  of  the  Universe,  and 
assuredly  they  possess  their  own  worth  for  the 
Absolute  (Chapter  xxiv.).  But,  as  themselves  and 
as  they  come  to  us,  they  are  no  less  certainly 
appearance.  So  far  as  we  know  them,  they  are  but 
inconsistent  constructions;  and,  beyond  our  know- 
ledge, they  are  forthwith  beyond  themselves.  The 
underlying  and  superior  reality  in  each  case  we  have 
no  right  to  call  either  a  body  or  a  soul.  For,  in  be- 
coming more,  each  loses  its  title  to  that  name. 
The  body  and  soul  are,  in  brief,  phenomenal  arrange- 
ments, which  take  their  proper  place  in  the  con-i 
structed  series  of  events  ;  and,  in  that  character,  they 
are  both  alike  defensible  and  necessary.  But  neither 
is  real  in  the  end,  each  is  merely  phenomenal,  and' 
one  has  no  title  to  fact  which  is  not  owned  by  the 
other. 


We  have  seen,  so  far,  that  soul  and  body  are, 
each  alike,  phenomenal  constructions,  and  we  must 
next  go  on  to  point  out  the  connection  between 
them.  But,  in  order  to  clear  the  ground,  I  will  first 
attempt  to  dispose  of  several  objections.  (1)  It  will 
be  urged  against  the  phenomenal  vievv  of  the  soul 
that,  upon  this,  the  soul  loses  independent  existence. 
If  it  is  no  more  than  a  series  of  psychical  events,  it 
becomes  an  appendage  to  the  permanent  body.  For 
a  psychical  series,  we  shall  be  told,  has  no  inherent 
bond  of  continuity  ;  nor  is  it,  even  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
continuous ;  nor,  again,  does  it  ofifer  anything  of 
which  we  can  predicate  "dispositions."  Hence,  if 
phenomenal,  the  soul  sinks  to  be  an  adjective  of  the 


3o8 


REAUTV. 


body.  (2)  And,  from  another  side,  we  shall  hear  it 
argued  that  the  psychical  series  demands,  as  its 
condition,  a  transcendent  soul  or  Ego,  and  indeed 
without  this  is  unintelligible.  (3)  And,  in  the  third 
place,  we  may  be  assured  that  some  psychical  fact 
is  given  which  contains  more  than  phenomena,  and 
that  hence  the  soul  has  by  us  been  defined  erron- 
eously. I  must  endeavour  to  say  something  on 
these  objections  in  their  order. 

I.   1  shall   have  to  show   lower  down   that  it  is 
impossible  to  treat  soul  as  the  bare  adjective  of  body, 
and  I   shall  therefore  say  nothing  on  that  point  at 
present.      "  But  why,"  I  may  be  asked,  "  not  at  least 
assist    yourself   with   the  body  .''     Why  strain  your- 
self to    define    the    soul   in  mere  psychical  terms  ? 
Would  it  not  be  better  to  call  a  soul  those  psychical 
facts    from    time    to   time    e.xperienced    within    one 
organism  ?  "     1  am  forced  to  reply  in  the  negative. 
Such  a  definition  would,  in  psychology,  perhaps  not 
take  us  wrong,  but,  for  all  that,  it  remains  incorrect 
and  indefensible.      For,  with    lower    organisms  es- 
pecially,   it    is  not  so  easy  to    fix  the  limits    of    a 
single    organism.     And,    again    further,    we    might 
perhaps  wish  to  define  the  organism  by  its  relation 
to  a  single  soul  ;  and,  if  so,   we  should   have   fallen 
into  a  vicious  circle.      Nor   is  it,  once   more,  even 
certain  that  the  identities  of  sou!  and   of  body  coin- 
cide.    We,  I  presume,  are  not  sure  that  one  soul 
might  not  have  a  succession  of  bodies.     And,  in  any 
case,  we  certainly  do  not  know  that  one  organism  can 
be  organic  to  no  more  than  one  soul.     There  might 
be  more    than    one   psychical    centre   at    one    time 
within  the  same  body,  and  several  bodies  might   be 
organs  to  a  higher  unknown  soul.     And,  even  if  we 
disregard  these  possibilities  as  merely  theoretical,  we 
have  still  to  deal  with   the  facts  of  mental  disease. 
It  seems  at   best  doubtful  if  in  some  cases  the  soul 
can  be  said  to  have  continuous  unity,  or  if  it  ought 
strictly  to  be  called  single.     And  then,  finally,  there 


BODY    AND   SOUL, 


309 


remains  the  question,  to  which  we  shall  return, 
whether  an  organism  is  necessary   in  all  cases   for 

the  existence  of  a  soul.  We  have  perhaps  with 
this  justified  our  refusal  to  introduce  body  into  our 
definition  of  soul.' 

But  without  this  introduction  what  becomes  of  thf. 
soul  ?  "  What,"  we  shall  be  asked,  "  at  any  time  can 
you  say  that  the  soul  is,  more  especially  at  those  times 
when  nothing  psychical  exists  ?  And  where  will  you 
place  the  dispositions  and  acquired  tendencies  of 
the  soul  ?  For,  in  the  first  place,  the  psychical  series 
is  not  unbroken,  and,  in  the  second  place,  dispositions 
are  not  psychical  events.  Are  you  then  not  forced 
back  to  the  body  as  the  one  continuous  substrate  .-' " 
This  is  a  serious  objection,  and,  though  our  answer 
to  it  may  prove  sufficient,  I  think  no  answer  can 
quite  satisfy. 

I  must  begin  by  denying  a  principle,  or,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  a  prejudice  with  regard  to  continuity. 
Real  existence  (we  must  allow)  either  is  or  is  not ; 
and  hence  I  agree  also  that,  if  in  time,  it  cannot 
cease  and  reappear,  and  that  it  must,  therefore,  be 
continuous.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have  proved 
that  reality  does  not  exist  in  time,  but  only  appears 
there.  What  we  find  in  time  is  mere  appearance  ; 
and  with  regard  to  appearance  I  know  no  reason 
why  //  should  not  cease  and  reappear  without  for- 

'  I  may  Ik:  alloweil  to  say  here  why  I  think  such  phrases  as 
"  individual,"  or  "  individualistic  point  of  view,"  cannot  serve  to 
fix  the  definition  of  "  soul."  To  regard  a  centre  of  experience 
from  an  individualistic  point  of  view  may  mean  to  view  it  as  a 
scries  of  psychical  events.  But  if  so,  the  meaning  is  only  meant, 
and  is  certainly  not  stated.  .And  the  term  "individual"  sins  by 
excess  as  well  as  by  defect  For  it  may  stand  for  "  Monad  "  or 
"  Ego  " ;  and  in  this  case  the  soul  is  at  once  more  than  pheno- 
menal, and  we  have  on  our  hands  (he  relation  of  its  plurality  to 
the  one  Monad — a  difficulty  which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  insuper- 
able. On  the  other  hand  "  individualistic"  might  imply  that  the 
soul's  contents  do  not,  in  any  sense,  transcend  its  private  exist- 
ence. The  term,  in  short,  requires  definition,  quite  as  much  as 
docs  the  object  which  it  is  used  to  define. 


3IO 


REALITY. 


feiting  identity.  A  phenomenon  A  is  produced  by 
certain  conditions,  which  then  are  modified.  Upon 
this,  A,  wholly  or  partially,  retires  from  existence, 
but,  on  another  change,  shows  itself  partly  or  in  full. 
A  disappears  into  conditions  which,  even  as  such, 
need  not  persist ;  but,  when  the  proper  circumstances 
are  re-created,  A  exists  once  again.  Shall  we  assert 
that,  if  so,  A\  identity  is  gone  ?  I  do  not  know  on 
what  principle.  Or  shall  we  insist  that,  at  least  in 
the  meantime,  A  cannot  be  said  to  be  ?  But  I 
could  not  say  on  what  ground.  If  we  take  such 
common  examples  as  a  rainbow,  or  a  waterfall,  or 
the  change  of  water  into  ice,  we  seek  in  vain  for 
any  principle  but  that  of  working  convenience.  We 
feel  sure  that  material  atoms  and  their  motion 
continue  unaltered,  and  that  their  existence,  if 
broken,  would  be  utterly  destroyed.  But,  unless  we 
falsely  take  these  atoms  and  their  motion  for  ultim- 
ate reality,  we  are  resting  here  on  no  basis  beyond 
practical  utility.  And  even  here  some  of  us  are  too 
inclined  to  lapse  into  an  easy-going  belief  in  the 
"  potential."  But,  as  soon  as  these  atoms  are  left 
behind,  can  we  even  pretend  to  have  any  principle  ? 
We  call  an  organism  identical,  though  we  do  not 
suppose  that  its  atoms  have  persisted.  It  is  identi- 
cal because  its  quality  is  (more  or  less)  the  same,  and 
because  that  quality  has  been  (more  or  less)  all  the 
time  there.  But  why  an  interval  must  be  fatal,  is 
surely  far  from  evident.  And,  in  fact,  we  are  driven 
to  the  conclusion  that  we  are  arguing  without  any 
rational  ground.  As  soon  as  an  existence  in  time  is 
perceived  to  be  appearance,  we  can  find  no  reason 
why  it  should  not  lapse,  and  again  be  created.  And 
with  an  organism,  where  even  the  matter  is  not  sup- 
posed to  persist,  we  seem  to  have  deserted  every 
show  of  principle.' 

There  is  a  further  point  which,  before  proceeding, 

'  On  the  subject  of  Identity  see  more  below.     And  compare 
Chapter  ix. 


BODY   AND   SOUL. 


we  may  do  well  to  notice.  We  saw  in  the  last  chapter 
that  part  of  Nature  could  hardly  be  said  to  have 
actual  existence  (p.  2  77).  Some  of  it  seemed  (at  least 
at  some  times)  to  be  only  hypothetical  or  barely 
potential  ;  and  I  would  urge  this  consideration  here 
with  regard  to  the  organism.  My  body  is  to  be 
real  because  it  exists  continuously  ;  but,  if,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  existence  must  be  actual,  can  we 
call  it  continuous  ?  The  essential  qualities  of  my 
Ixidy  (whatever  these  are)  are  certainly  not,  so  far  as 
we  know,  perceived  always.  But,  if  so,  and  if  they 
exist  sometimes  not  for  perception  but  for  thought, 
then  most  assuredly  sometimes  they  do  not  exist  as 
such,  and  hence  their  continuity  is  broken.  Thus 
we  have  been  forced  to  another  very  serious 
admission.  We  not  only  are  ignorant  why  con- 
tinuity in  time  should  be  essential,  but,  so  far  as  the 
organism  goes,  we  do  not  know  that  it  possesses 
such  continuity.  It  seems  rather  to  exist  at  times 
potentially  and  merely  in  its  conditions.  This  is  a 
sort  of  existence  which  we  shall  discuss  in  the  follow- 
ing chapter,  but  it  is  at  all  events  not  existence 
actual  and  proper. 

After  these  more  general  remarks  we  may  proceed 
to  the  difficulties  urged  against  our  view  of  the  soul. 
We  have  defined  the  soul  as  a  series  of  psychical 
events,  and  it  has  been  objected  that,  if  so,  we  can- 
not say  what  the  soul  is  at  any  one  time.  But  ati 
any  one  time,  I  reply,  the  soul  is  the  present  datum\ 
of  psychical  fact,  plus  its  actual  past  and  its  con- 
ditional future,  Or,  until  the  last  phrase  has  been 
explained,  we  may  content  ourselves  with  saying 
that  the  soul  is  those  psychical  events,  which  it  both 
is  now  and  has  been.  And  this  account,  I  admit, 
qualifies  something  by  adjectives  which  are  not,  and 
to  offer  it  as  an  expression  of  ultimate  truth  would 
be  wholly  indefensible.  But  then  the  soul.  I  must 
repeat,  is  itself  not  ultimate  fact.     It  is  appearance, 


3" 


REALITY. 


and  any  description  of  it  must  contain  inconsistency. 
And,  if  any  one  objects,  he  may  be  invited  to  define, 
for  example,  a  body  moving  at  a  certain  rate,  and  to 
define  it  without  predicating  of  the  present  what  is 
either  past  or  future.  And,  if  he  will  attempt  this, 
he  will,  I  think,  perhaps  tend  to  lose  confidence. 

But  we  have,  so  far,  not  said  what  we  mean  by 
"  dispositions."  A  soul  after  all,  we  shall  be  reminded, 
possesses  a  character,  if  not  original,  at  least  acquired. 
And  we  certainly  say  that  it  is,  because  of  that  which 
we  expect  of  it.  The  soul's  habits  and  tendencies 
are  essential  to  its  nature,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
they  cannot  be  psychical  events.  Hence  (the  objec- 
tion goes  on  to  urge)  they  are  not  psychical  at  all,  but 
merely  physical  facts.  Now  to  this  1  reply  first 
tliat  a  disposition  may  be  "  physical,"  and  may,  for 
all  that,  be  still  not  an  actual  fact.  Until  I  see  it 
defined  so  as  to  exclude  reference  to  any  past  or 
future,  and  freed  from  every  sort  of  implication  with 
the  conditional  and  potential,  1  shall  not  allow  that 
it  has  been  translated  into  physical  fact.  But,  even  in 
that  case,  1  should  not  accept  the  translation,  for  1 
consider  that  we  have  a  right  everywhere  for  the 
sake  of  convenience  to  use  the  "conditional."  Into 
the  proper  meaning  of  this  term  I  shall  enquire  in  the 
next  chapter,  but  I  will  try  to  state  briefly  here  how 
we  apply  it  to  the  soul.  In  saying  that  the  soul  has 
a  disposition  of  a  certain  kind,  we  take  the  present 
and  past  psychical  facts  as  the  subject,  and  we  pre- 
dicate of  this  subject  other  psychical  facts,  which  we 
think  it  may  become.  The  soul  at  present  is  such 
that  it  is  part  of  those  conditions  which,  given  the 
rest,  would  produce  certain  psychical  events.  And 
hence  the  soul  is  the  real  possibility  of  these  events, 
just  as  objects  in  the  dark  are  the  possibility  of 
colour.  Now  this  way  of  speaking  is,  of  course,  in 
the  end  incorrect,  and  is  defensible  only  on  the 
ground  of  convenience.  It  is  convenient,  when  facts 
are  and  have  been  such  and  such,  to  have  a  short 


BODY   AMD   SOUL. 


313 


way  of  saying  what  we  infer  that  in  the  future  they 
may  be.  But  we  have  no  right  to  speak  of  disposi- 
tions at  all,  if  we  turn  them  into  actual  qualities  of 
the  soul.  The  attempt  to  do  this  would  force  us  to 
go  on  enlarging  the  subject  by  taking  in  more  condi- 
tions, and  in  the  end  we  should  be  asserting  of  the 
Universe  at  large.'  I  admit  that  it  is  arbitrary  and 
inconsistent  to  predicate  what  you  cannot  say  the 
soul  is,  but  what  you  only  judge  about  it.  But 
everywhere,  in  dealing  with  phenomena,  we  can  find 
no  escape  from  inconsistency  and  arbitrariness.  We 
should  not  lessen  these  evils,  but  should  greatly 
increase  them,  if  we  took  a  disposition  as  meaning 
more  than  the  probable  course  of  psychical  events. 

But  the  soul,  I  shall  be  reminded,  is  not  contin- 
uous in  time,  since  there  are  intervals  and  breaks  in 
the  psychical  series.  I  shall  not  attempt  to  deny 
this.  We  might  certainly  fall  back  upon  unconscious 
sensations,  and  insist  that  these,  in  any  case  and 
always,  are  to  some  extent  there.  And  such  an  as- 
sumption could  hardly  be  shown  to  be  untrue.  But 
I  do  not  see  that  we  could  justify  it  on  any  sufficient 
ground,  and  I  will  admit  that  the  psychical  series 
either  is,  or  at  all  events  may  be  broken." 

But,  on  the  other  side,  this  admitted  breach  seems 
quite  unimportant.  1  can  find  no  reason  why  a 
soul's  e.xistence,  if  interrupted  and  resumed,  should 
not  be  identical.  Even  apart  from  memory,  if  these 
divided  existences  showed  the  same  quality,  we 
should  call  them  the  same.  Or,  if  we  declined, 
we  should  find  no  reason  that  would  justify  our  re- 
fusal. We  might  insist  that,  at  any  rate,  in  the 
interval   the  soul  has  lived  elsewhere,  or  that  this 


'  I  shall  endeavour  to  explain  this  in  the  following  chapter. 

'^  Unconscious  slates  could  also  be  used  10  explain  "  disposi- 
tions," in  ray  opinion  quite  indefensibly.  I  may  add  ihaf,  within 
proper  limits,  I  think  psychology  must  make  use  of  unconscious 
psychical  facts. 


314 


REALITY, 


interval  must,  at  all  events,  not  be  too  long  ;  but,  so 
far  as  I  see,  in  both  cases  we  should  be  asserting 
without  a  trround.  On  the  other  hand,  the  amount 
of  qualitative  sameness,  wanted  for  psychical  identity, 
seems  fixed  on  no  principle  (Chapter  ix.).  And 
the  sole  conclusion  we  can  draw  is  this,  that  breaks 
in  the  temporal  series  are  no  argument  against  our 
regarding  it  as  a  single  soul. 

"What  then  in  the  interim,"  I  may  be  asked. 
"  do  you  say  that  the  soul  is  ? "  For  myself,  I 
reply,  I  should  not  say  it  is  at  all,  when  it  does  not 
appear.  All  that  in  strictness  I  could  assert  would 
be  that  actually  the  soul  is  not,  though  it  has  been, 
and  again  may  be.  And  I  have  urged  above,  that 
we  can  find  no  valid  objection  to  intervals  of  non- 
existence. But  speaking  not  strictly,  but  with  a 
view  to  practical  convenience,  we  might  affirm  that 
in  these  intervals  the  soul  still  persists.  Wc  might 
say  it  is  the  conditions,  into  which  it  has  disappeared, 
and  which  probably  will  reproduce  it.  And,  since 
the  body  is  a  principal  part  of  these  conditions,  we 
may  find  it  convenient  to  identify  the  "potential" 
soul  with  the  body.  This  may  be  convenient,  but 
we  must  remember  that  really  it  is  incorrect.  For, 
firstly,  conditions  are  one  thing,  and  actual  fact 
another  thing.  And,  in  the  second  place,  the  body 
(upon  any  hypothesis)  is  not  all  the  conditions  re- 
quired for  the  soul.  It  is  impossible  wholly  to  ex- 
clude the  action  of  the  environment.  And  there  is 
again,  thirdly,  a  consideration  on  which  I  must 
lay  emphasis.  If  the  soul  is  resolved  and  disappears 
into  that  which  may  restore  it,  does  not  the  same 
thing  hold  precisely  with  regard  to  the  body  ?  Is 
it  not  conceivable  that,  in  that  interval  when  the 
soul  is  "conditional,"  the  body  also  should  itself  be 
dissolved  into  conditions  which  afterwards  re-create 
it  .''  But,  if  so,  these  ulterior  conditions  which  now, 
I  presume  we  are  to  say,  the  soul  is,  are  assuredly 
ill  strictness  not  the  body  at  all.     As  a   matter  of 


BODY    AND   SOUL. 


315 


fact,   doubtless,    this  event  does  not   ha[>[3cn   within 

our  knowledge.     We  do  not  find  that  bodies  dis- 

■  appear  and  once  more  are  re-made  ;  but,  merely  on 

jthat  ground,   we  are  not  entitled  to  deny  that  it  is 


ible.      And,  if  it 


ible,  then  I 


lid 


woul  ^ 
at  once  the  following  conclusions.  You  cannot, 
except  as  a  matter  of  convenience,  identify  the  con- 
ditions of  the  soul  with  the  body.  And  you  cannot 
assert  that  the  continuous  existence  of  the  body  is 
essentially  necessary  for  the  sameness  and  unity  of 
the  soul.^ 

We  have  now  dealt  with  the  subject  of  the  soul's 
continuity,  and  have  also  said  something  on  its 
"dispositions."  And,  before  passing  on  to  objec- 
tions of  another  kind.  I  will  here  try  to  obviate  a 
misunderstanding.  The  soul  is  an  ideal  construc- 
tion, but  a  construction  by  whom  ?  Could  we 
maintain  that  the  soul  exists  only  for  itself.'*  This 
would  be  certainly  an  error,  for  we  can  say  that 
a  soul  is  before  memory  exists,  or  when  it  does 
not  remember.  The  soul  exists  always  for  a 
soul,  but  not  always  for  itself.  And  it  is  an 
ideal  construction,  not  because  it  is  psychical,  but 
because  (like  my  body)  it  is  a  series  appearing 
in  time.  The  same  difficulty  attaches  to  all  pheno- 
menal existence.  Past  and  future,  and  the  Nature 
which  no  one  perceives  (Chapter  xxii.)  exist,  as 
such,  only  for  some  subject  which  thinks  them. 
But  this  neither  means  that  their  ultimate  reality 
consists  in  being  thought,  nor  does  it  mean  that 
they  exist  outside  of  finite  souls.  And  it  does  not 
mean  that  the  Real  is  made  by  merely  adding 
thought  to  our  actual  presentations.  Immediate 
experience  in  time,  and  thought,  are  each  alike  but 
false  appearance,  and,  in  coming  together,  each  must 
forego  its  own  distinctive  character.  In  the  Absol- 
ute  there  is  neither  mere  existence  at  one  moment 

'  How  far  the  soul  can  be  said  to  result  from  merely  physical 
conditions  I  shall  enquire  lower  down. 


3'6 


REALITY. 


nor  any  ideal  construction. 

higher  and  all-containincr  Reality  (Chapter  xxiv.). 


Each   is  merged  in  a  / 
litv  /Chanter  xxiv.V        ' 


2.  We  have  seen,  so  far,  that  our  phenomenal 
view  of  the  soul  does  not  degrade  it  to  an  adjective 
depending  on  the  body.  Can  we  reply  to  objections 
based  on  other  grounds  ?  The  psychical  series,  we 
may  be  told,  demands  as  its  condition  a  something 
transcendent,  a  soul  or  Ego  which  stands  above, 
and  gives  unity  to,  the  series.  But  such  a  soul,  I 
reply,  merely  adds  further  difficulties  to  those  we 
had  before.  No  doubt  the  series,  being  pheno- 
menal, is  the  appearance  of  Reality,  but  it  hardly 
follows  from  this  that  its  reality  is  an  Ego  or  soul. 
We  have  seen  (Chapter  x.)  that  such  a  being,  be- 
cause finite,  is  infected  with  its  own  relations  to 
other  finites.  And  it  is  so  far  from  giving  unity  to 
the  series  of  events,  that  their  plurality  refuses  to 
come  together  with  its  singleness.  Hence  the  one- 
ness remains  standing  outside  the  many,  as  a  further 
finite  unit.  You  cannot  show  how  the  series  be- 
comes a  system  in  the  soul  ;  and,  if  you  could,  you 
cannot  free  that  soul  from  its  perplexed  position  as 
one  finite  related  to  other  finites.  In  short,  meta- 
physically your  soul  or  Ego  is  a  mass  of  confusion, 
and  we  have  now  long  ago  disposed  of  it.  And  if 
it  is  offered  us  merely  as  a  working  conception, 
which  does  not  claim  truth,  then  this  conception,  as 
we  have  seen,  will  not  work  in  metaphysics.  Its 
alleged  function  must  be  confined  to  psychology,  an 
empirical  science,  and  the  further  consideration  of  it 
here  would  be,  therefore,  irrelevant' 

3.  But    our  account  of  the  soul,   as 

'  In  another  place  I  should  be  ready  to  enter  on  this  question. 
It  would,  I  think,  not  be  difficult  to  show  in  psychology  that  the 
idea  of  a  soul,  or  an  Ego,  or  a  Will,  or  an  activity  beyond  events 
explains  nothing  ;it  all.  It  serves  only  to  produce  false  appear- 
ances of  explanation,  and  to  throw  a  mist  over  what  is  really  left 
quite  unexplained. 


BODY   AND   SOUL. 


3'7 


events,  may  be  attacked  perhaps  from  the  ground  of 
psychology  itself.  Tliere  are  psychical  facts,  it  may 
be  urged,  which  are  more  than  events,  and  these 
facts,  it  may  be  argued,  refute  our  definition.  I 
must  briefly  deal  with  this  objection,  and  my  reply 
may  be  summed  up  thus.  There  are  psychical 
facts,  which  are  more  than  events  ;  but,  if  they  are 
not  also  events,  they  are  not  facts  at  all.  I  will  take 
these  two  propositions  in  their  order.' 

[a)  We  have  seen  that  my  psychical  states,  and 
my  private  e.xperience,  can  be  at  the  same  time 
what  they  are,  and  yet  something  much  more.^ 
Every  distinction  that  is  made  in  the  fact  of  presen- 
tation, every  content,  or  "  wliat,"  that  is  loosened 
from  its  "  that,"  is  at  once  more  than  a  mere  event. 
Nay  an  event  itself,  as  one  member  in  a  temporal 
series,   is  only  itself  by  transcending  its   own  pre- 

'  There  are  some  distinctions  which  we  must  keep  in  mind. 
By  txistence  (taken  strictly)!  mean  a  temporal  series  of  events  or 
facts.  And  this  series  is  not  throughout  directly  experienced.  It 
is  an  ideal  construction  from  the  basis  of  what  is  presented.  But, 
though  partly  ideal,  such  a  series  is  not  wholly  so.  For  it  leaves 
its  contents  in  the  form  of  particulars,  and  the  immediate  conjunc- 
tion of  lieingand  quality  is  not  throughout  broken  up.  Thisness, 
or  the  irrelevant  context,  is  retained,  in  short,  except  so  far  as  is 
required  to  make  a  series  of  events.  And,  though  the  events  of 
the  whole  series  are  not  actually  perceived,  they  must  be  taken  as 
what  is  in  its  character  perceptible. 

Any  part  of  a  temporal  series,  no  matter  how  long,  can  be 
called  an  event  or  fact.  For  it  is  taken  as  a  piece,  or  quantity, 
I  made  up  of  perceptible  duration. 

By  fact  I  mean  either  an  event,  or  else  what  is  directly  ex- 
perienced. Any  aspect  of  direct  experience,  or  again  of  an  event, 
can  itself  be  loosely  styled  a  fact  or  event,  so  far  as  you  consider 
it  as  a  qualifying  adjective  of  one. 

I  may  notice,  last,  that  an  immediate  experience,  e.g.  of  suc- 
cession, can  contain  that  which,  when  distinguished,  is  more  than 
one  event,  and  it  can  contain  also  an  asjjcct  which,  as  distin- 
guished, is  beyond  events.  But  I  should  add  that  I  have  not 
tried   to  use  any  of  the  above  words  everywhere  strictly. 

*  See  above,  p.  300,  and  compare  Chapters  xix.  and  xxi.  And 
for  the  relation  of  existence  to  tliought  see,  further,  Chapter 
xxiv. 


3'8 


REALITY. 


sent  existence.  And  this  transcendence  becomes 
more  obvious,  when  an  identical  quality  persists 
unaltered  through  a  succession  of  changes.  There 
is,  to  my  mind,  no  question  as  to  our  being  con- 
cerned here  with  more  than  mere  events.  And,  far 
from  contesting  this,  I  have  endeavoured  to  insist 
on  the  conclusion  that  everything  in  time  has  a 
quality  which  passes  beyond  itself. 

{b)  But  then,  if  so.  have  we  allowed  the  force  of 
the  objection  }  Have  we  admitted  that  there  are 
facts  which  are  not  events  in  time  ?  This  would 
be  a  grave  misunderstanding,  and  against  it  we 
must  urge  our  second  proposition.  A  fact,  or  event, 
is  always  more  than  itself ;  but,  if  less  than  itself,  it 
is  no  longer  properly  a  fact.  It  has  now  been  taken 
as  a  content  working  loose  from  the  "this,"  and 
has,  so  far,  become  a  mere  aspect  and  abstraction. 
And  yet  this  abstraction,  on  the  other  hand,  mustj 
have  its  existence.  It  must  appear,  somehow,  as,  or 
in  a  particular  event,  with  a  given  place  and  dura- 
tion in  the  temporal  series.  There  are,  in  brief, 
aspects  which,  taken  apart,  are  not  events  ;  and  yet 
these  aspects  must  appear  in  psychical  existence. 

The  objection  has  failed  to  perceive  this  double 
nature  of  things,  and  it  has  hence  fallen  blindly  into 
a  vicious  dilemma.  Because  in  our  life  there  is 
more  than  events,  it  has  rashly  argued  that  this 
"  more "  must  be  psychical  fact.  But,  if  it  is 
psychical  fact,  and  not  able  to  be  experienced,  I  do 
not  know  what  it  could  mean,  or  in  what  wonderful 
way  we  could  be  supposed  to  get  at  it.  And,  on 
the  other  side,  to  be  experienced  without  happening 
in  the  psychical  series,  or  to  occur  there  without 
taking  place  as  an  event  among  events,  seem  phrases 
without  meaning.  What  we  experience  is  a  content, 
which  is  one  with,  and  which  occurs  as,  a  particular 
mental  state.  The  same  content,  again,  as  ideal,  is 
used  away  from  its  state,  and  only  appears  there. 
By  itself  it  is  not  a  fact ;  and,  if  it  were  one.  it  would, 


BODY   AND    SOUL. 


319 


SO  far,  cease  to  be  ideal,  and  would  therefore  become 
a  mere  event  among  events. 

If  you  take  the  identity  of  a  series,  whether 
physical  or  psychical,  this  identity,  considered  as 
such,  is  not  an  event  which  happens.'  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  can  we  call  it  a  fact  of  experience  ?  To 
speak  strictly,  we  cannot,  since  all  identity  is  ideal. 
It,  as  such,  is  not  directly  experienced,  even  as  occur- 
ring in  the  facts,  and,  still  less,  as  something  which 
happens  alongside  of  or  between  them.  It  is  an 
adjective  which,  as  separate,  could  not  exist,  and  its 
essence,  we  may  say,  consists  in  distinction.  But,  on 
the  other  side,  this  distinction,  and,  again  the  con- 
struction of  a  series,  is  an  event.  And  it  must 
happen  in  a  soul"-;  for  where  else  could  it  exist  ? 
As  a  mental  state,  more  than  its  mere  content,  it  also, 
must  have  a  place,  and  duration,  in  the  psychical 
series.  And,  otherwise,  it  could  not  be  a  part  of 
experience.  But  the  identity  itself  is  but  an  aspect 
of  the  events,  or  event,  and  is  certainly  ideal. 

"  No,"  I  shall  be  told,  "  the  identity  and  continuity 
of  the  soul  must  be  more  than  this.  It  cannot  fall 
in  what  is  given,  for  all  the  given  is  discrete.  And 
it  cannot  consist  in  ideal  content,  for,  in  that  case, 
it  would  not  be  real.  It  must  therefore  come  some- 
how along  with  phenomena,  in  such  a  way  that  it 
does  not  happen  as  an  event  within  the  psychical 
series."  But,  as  soon  as  we  consider  this  claim,  its 
inconsistency  is  obvious.  If  anything  is  experienced, 
now  or  always,  along  with  what  is  given,  then  this 
^whatever  it  is)  is  surely  a  psychical  event,  with  a 
place,  or  places,  in  the  series.  But,  if,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  has  not,  in  any  sense,  position  or  duration 
in  my  history,  you  will  hardly  persuade  me  that  it 

'  The  whole  series  itself  will,  in  a  sense,  be  one  event  since  it 
has  a  place  and  duration.  But  it  will  not  be  throughout  an  ex- 
perienced fact. 

*  That  the  identity  of  a  soul  should  be  only  so  far  as  it  exists 
for  some  soul,  is  one  of  the  circles  we  have  pointed  out  already. 


320 


REALITY. 


makes  part  of  my  experience  at  all.  I  do  not  see, 
in  short,  how  anything  can  come  there,  unless  it  is 
prepared,  from  some  side,  to  enter  and  to  take  its 
place  there.  And,  if  it  is  not  to  be  an  element  in 
experience,  it  will  be  nothing.  And  I  doubt  if  any 
one  would  urge  a  claim  so  suicidal  and  so  absurd, 
unless  for  the  sake  of  and  in  order  to  defend,  a  pre- 
conceived doctrine.  Because  phenomena  in  time 
are  not  real,  there  must  be  something  more  than 
temporal.  But  because  we  wrongly  assume  that 
nothing  is  real,  unless  it  exists  as  a  thing,  therefore 
the  element,  which  transcends  time,  must  be  some- 
how and  somewhere  beside  it  This  element  is  a 
world,  or  a  soul,  or  an  Ego,  which  never  descends 
into  our  series.  It  never  comes  down  there  itself, 
though  we  are  forced,  I  presume,  to  say  that  it  works, 
and  that  it  makes  itself  felt.  But  this  irrational  in- 
fluence and  position  results  merely  from  our  false 
assumption.  VV^e  are  attempting  to  pass  beyond  the 
series,  while  we,  in  effect,  deny  that  anything  is  real, 
unless  it  is  a  member  there.  For  our  other  world, 
and  our  soul,  and  our  Ego,  which  exist  beside 
temporal  events,  have  been  taken  themselves  as  but 
finite  things.  They  merely  reduplicate  phenomena, 
they  do  but  double  the  world  of  appearance.  They 
leave  on  our  hands  unsolved  the  problem  that  vexed 
us  before,  and  they  load  us  beside  with  an  additional 
puzzle.  We  have  now,  not  only  another  existence 
no  better  than  the  first,  but  we  have  to  e.xplain  also 
how  one  of  these  stands  to,  or  works  on,  the  other. 
And  the  result  is  open  self-contradiction  or  thought- 
less obscurity.  But  the  remedy  is  to  purge  our- 
selves of  our  groundless  prejudice,  and  to  seek 
reality  elsewhere  than  in  the  existence  of  things. 
Continuity  and  identity,  the  other  world  and  the 
Ego,  do  not,  as  such,  exist.  They  are  ideal,  and,  as 
such,  they  are  not  facts.  But  none  the  less  they 
have  reality,  at  least  not  inferior  to  that  of  temporal 
events.     We  must  admit   that,    in    the   full  sense, 


BODY    AND   SOUL. 


321 


neither  ideality  nor  existence  is  real.  But  you  can- 
not pass,  from  the  one-sided  denial  of  one,  to  the 
one-sided  assertion  of  the  other.  The  attempt  is 
based  on  a  false  alternative,  and,  in  either  case,  must 
result  in  self-contradiction. 

It  is  perhaps  necessary,  though  wearisome,  to  add 
some  remarks  on  the  Ego.  The  failure  to  see  that 
continuity  and  identity  are  ideal,  has  produced  efforts 
to  find  the  Ego  existing,  as  such,  as  an  actual  fact. 
This  Ego  is,  on  the  one  hand,  to  be  somehow  ex- 
perienced as  a  fact,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  must 
not  exist  either  as  one  or  as  a  number  of  events. 
And  the  attempt  naturally  is  futile.  For  most 
assuredly,  as  we  find  it,  the  self  is  determinate.  It 
is  always  qualified  by  a  content.'  The  Ego  and 
Non-ego  are  at  any  time  experienced,  not  in  general, 
but  with  a  particular  character.  But  such  an  appear- 
ance is  obviously  a  psychical  event,  with  a  given 
place  in  the  series.  And  upon  this  I  urge  the  follow- 
ing dilemma.  If  your  Ego  has  no  content,  it  is 
nothing,  and  it  therefore  is  not  experienced  ;  but,  if 
on  the  other  hand  it  is  anything,  it  is  a  phenomenon 
in  time.  "  But  not  at  all,"  may  be  the  answer,  "since 
the  Ego  is  outside  the  series,  and  is  merely  related 
to  it,  and  perhaps  acting  on  it."  I  do  not  see  that 
this  helps  us.  If,  1  repeat,  your  Ego  has  no  content, 
then  anywhere  it  is  nothing ;  and  the  relation  of 
something  to  this  nothing,  and  again  its  action  upon 
anything,  are  utterly  unmeaning.  But,  if  upon  the 
other  hand  this  Ego  has  a  content,  then,  for  the  sake 
of  argument,  you  may  say,  if  you  please,  that  it 
exists.  But,  in  any  case,  it  stands  outside,  and  it 
does  not  come  into,  experience  at  all.  "  No,  it  does 
not  come  there  itself;  it  never,  so  to  speak,  appears 
in  person  ;  but  its  relation  to  phenomena,  or  its 
action  on  them,  are  certainly  somehow  experienced, 

*  I  should  add  that  I  am  convinced  that  the  Ego  is  a  derivative 
product  {Mind,  No.  47).  But  the  argument  above  is  quite  inde- 
pendent of  this  conclusion. 

A.  R.  Y 


322 


REALITY.  ^ 


or  at  least  known."  In  this  answer  the  position 
seems  changed,  but  it  is  really  the  same,  and  it  does 
but  lead  back  to  our  old  dilemma.  You  cannot,  in 
any  sense,  know,  or  perceive,  or  experience,  a  term 
as  in  relation,  unless  you  have  also  the  other  term 
to  which  it  is  related.  And,  if  we  will  but  ponder 
this,  surely  it  becomes  self-evident.  Well  then, 
either  you  have  not  got  any  relation  of  phenomena 
to  anything  at  all  ;  or  else  the  other  term,  your 
thing  the  Ego,  takes  its  place  among  the  rest.  It 
becomes  another  event  among  psychical  events.' 

It  would  be  useless  to  pursue  into  its  ramifica- 
tions a  view  false  at  the  root,  and  based  (as  we  have 
seen)  on  a  vicious  alternative.  That  which  is  more 
than  an  event  must  also,  from,  another  side,  exist, 
and  must  thus  appear  in,  or  as,  one  member  of  the 
temporal  series.  But,  so  far  as  it  transcends  time, 
it  is  ideal,  and,  as  such,  is  not  fact.  The  attempt  to 
lake  it  as  existing  somehow  and  somewhere  along- 
side, thrusts  it  back  into  the  sphere  of  finite  parti- 
culars. In  this  way,  with  all  our  struggles,  we  never 
rise  beyond  some  world  of  mere  events,  and  we 
revolve  vainly  in  a  circle  which  brings  us  round  to 
our  starting-place.  If  it  were  possible  for  us  to 
apprehend  the  whole  series  at  once,  and  to  take  in  its 
detail  as  one  undivided  totality,  certainly  then  the 
timeless  would  have  been  experienced  as  a  fact. 
But  in  that  case  ideality  on  the  one  side,  and  events 
on  the  other,  would  have  each  come  to  an  end  in  a 
higher  mode  of  being. 

The  objections,  which  we  have  discussed,  have  all 
shown  themselves  ill-founded.  There  is  certainly 
nothing  experienced  which   is  not  an   event,  though  | 


'  If  aciion  is  attributed  to  the  Ego  things  are  made  even  worse, 
for  activity  has  been  shown  to  imply  a  sequence  in  time  (Chapter 
vii.).  I  may  perhaps  remind  the  reader  liere  that  to  speak  of  a 
relation  between  phenomena  and  the  Reality  is  quite  incorrect. 
There  are  no  relations,  properly,  except  between  things  finite.  If 
we  speak  otherwise,  it  should  be  by  a  licence. 


BODY   AND   SOUL. 


323 


we  have  seen  that  in  events  there  is  that  which 
transcends  them.  All  continuity  is  ideal,  and  the 
arguments  brought  against  the  oneness  of  a  psychic- 
al series,  we  saw,  were  not  valid.  Nor  could  we 
find  that  our  phenomenal  view  of  the  soul  brought  it 
down  to  be  an  adjective  depending  on  the  organism. 
For  the  organism  itself  is  also  phenomenal.  Soul 
and  body  are  alike  in  being  only  appearance,  and 
their  connection  is  merely  the  relation  of  phenomena." 
It  is  the  special  nature  of  this  relation  that  we  have 
next  to  discuss. 

I  will  begin  by  pointing  out  a  view  from  which 
we  must  dissent.  The  soul  and  body  may  be  re- 
garded as  two  sides  of  one  reality,  or  as  the  same 
thing  taken  twice  and  from  two  aspects  of  its  being. 
I  intend  to  say  nothing  here  on  the  reasons  which 
may  lead  to  this  conclusion,  nor  to  discuss  the  various 
objections  which  might  be  brought  against  them.  I 
will  brietly  state  the  ground  on  which  I  am  forced 
to  reject  the  proposed  identity.  In  the  first  place, 
even  if  we  confine  our  attention  to  phenomena,  I  do 
not  see  that  we  are  justified  in  thus  separating  each 
soul  with  its  body  from  the  rest  of  the  world  (p.  358). 
And  there  is  a  fatal  objection  to  this  doctrine,  if 
carried  further.  If  in  the  end  soul  and  body  are  to 
be  one  thing,  then,  with  whatever  justification,  you 
have  concluded  to  a  plurality  of  finite  things  within 
the  Absolute.  But  we  have  seen  that  such  a  con- 
clusion is  wholly  indefensible.  W'hen  soul  and  body 
come  together  in  Reality,  I  utterly  fail  to  perceive 
any  reason  why  the  special  nature  of  each  is,  as  such, 
to  be  preserved.  It  is  one  thing  to  be  convinced  that 
no  element,  or  aspect  of  phenomena,  can  be  lost  in  the 
Absolute.  But  it  is  quite  another  thing  to  maintain 
that  every  appearance,  when  there,  continues  to  keep 
its  distinctive  character.  To  be  resolved  rather  and 
to  be  merged,  each  as  a  factor  in  what  is  higher,  is 
the  nature  of  such  things  as  the  body  and  the  soul. 


I 


324 


REALITY. 


And  with  this  we  are  broug^ht  to  a  well-known 
and  much-debated  question.  Is  there  a  causal  con- 
nection between  the  physical  and  the  psychical,  ami 
are  we  to  say  that  one  series  influences  the  other  ? 
I  will  begin  by  statinqr  the  view  which  pritna  facie 
suggests  itself.  I  will  then  briefly  discuss  some 
erroneous  doctrines,  and  will  end  by  trying  to  set 
out  a  defensible  conclusion.  And,  first,  the  belief 
which  occurs  to  the  unbiassed  observer  is  that  soul 
acts  upon  body  and  body  on  soul.  I  do  not  mean 
by  this  that  bare  soul  seems  to  work  on  bare  body,  for 
such  a  distinction  is  made  only  by  a  further  reflection. 
I  mean  that,  if  without  any  theory  you  look  at  the 
facts,  you  will  find  that  changes  in  one  series  (which- 
ever it  is)  are  often  concerned  in  bringing  on  changes 
in  the  other.  Psychical  and  physical,  each  alike, 
make  a  difference  to  one  another.  It  is  obvious  that 
alterations  of  the  soul  come  from  movements  in  the 
organism,  and  it  is  no  less  obvious  that  the  latter 
may  be  consequent  on  the  former.  We  may  be  sure 
that  no  one,  except  to  save  a  theory,  would  deny 
that  in  volition  mind  influences  matter.  And  with 
pain  and  pleasure  such  a  denial  would  be  even  less 
natural.  To  hold  that  now  in  the  individual  pleasure 
and  pain  do  not  move,  but  are  mere  idle  accompani- 
ments, to  maintain  that  never  in  past  development 
have  they  ever  made  a  difference  to  anything — 
surely  this  strikes  the  common  observer  as  a  wilful 
parado.v.  And,  for  myself,  I  doubt  if  most  of  those, 
who  have  accepted  the  doctrine  in  general,  have  fully 
realized  its  meaning. 

This  natural  view,  that  body  and  soul  have  influ- 
ence on  each  other,  we  shall  find  in  the  end  to  be 
proof  against  attack.  But  we  must  pass  on  now  to 
consider  some  opposing  conclusions.  The  man,  who 
denies  the  inter-action  in  any  sense  of  body  and 
soul,  must  choose  from  amongst  the  possibilities 
which  remain.  He  may  take  the  two  series  as 
going  on  independently  and  side  by  side,  or  may 


BODY   AND   SOUL, 


325 


make  one  the  subordinate  and  adjective  of  tlie 
other.  And  I  will  begin  by  making  some  remarks 
on  the  parallel  series.  But  I  must  ignore  the 
historical  development  of  this  view,  and  must  treat 
it  barely  as  if  it  were  an  idea  which  is  offered  us 
to-day. 

1  would  observe,  first,  that  an  assertion  or  a  denial 
of  causation  can  hardly  be  proved  if  you  insist  on 
demonstration.  You  may  show  that  every  detail 
we  know  points  towards  one  result,  and  that  we  can 
find  no  special  reason  for  taking  this  result  as  false. 
And,  having  done  so  much,  you  certainly  have 
proved  your  conclusion.  But,  even  after  this,  a 
doubt  remains  with  regard  to  what  is  possible. 
And,  unless  all  other  possibilities  can  be  disposed  of, 
you  have  failed  to  demonstrate.  In  the  particular 
doctrine  before  us  we  have,  I  think,  a  case  in  point. 
The  mere  coincidence  of  soul  and  body  cannot  be 
shown  to  be  impossible  ;  but  this  bare  possibility  is, 
on  the  other  hand,  no  good  reason  for  supposing  the 
coincidence  to  be  fact. 

Appearance  points  to  a  causal  connection  between 
the  physical  and  psychical  series.  And  yet  this 
appearance  might  possibly  be  a  show,  produced  in 
the  following  way.  There  might  on  each  side  be 
other  conditions,  escaping  our  view,  which  would  be 
enough  to  account  for  the  changes  in  each  series. 
And  we  may  even  carry  our  supposition  a  step 
further  on.  There  might  on  both  sides  be,  within 
each  series,  no  causal  connection  between  its  events. 
A  play  of  unknown  conditions  might,  on  either  side, 
present  the  appearance  of  a  series.  The  successive 
facts  would  in  that  case  show  a  regular  sequence, 
but  they  would  not  actually  be  members  and  links 
of  any  one  connected  series.  I  do  not  see  how  such 
a  suggestion  can  be  proved  to  be  impossible  ;  but 
that  is  surely  no  reason  for  regarding  it  as  fact. 
And  to  this  same  result  we  are  led,  when  we  return 
to  consider  the  idea  of  two  coinciding  series.     The 


326 


REALITY. 


idea  seems  baseless,  and  I  do  not  think  it  necessary 
to  dwell  further  on  this  point' 

'  We  seem,  therefore,  driven  to  regard  soul  and 
body  as  causally  connected,  and  the  question  will  be 
as  to  the  nature  of  their  connection.  Can  this  be 
all,  so  to  speak,  on  one  side  ?  Is  the  soul  merely 
an  adjective  depending  on  the  body,  and  never  more 
than  an  effect  ?  Or  is,  again,  the  body  a  mere  accom- 
paniment resulting  from  the  soul  ?  Both  these  ques- 
tions must  be  met  by  an  emphatic  negative.  The 
suggested  relation  is,  in  each  case,  inconsistent  and 
impossible,  And,  since  there  is  no  plausibility  in 
the  idea  of  physical  changes  always  coming  from, 
and  never  reacting  on,  the  soul,  I  will  not  stop  to  con- 
sider it.  I  will  pass  to  the  opposite  one-sidedness. 
a  doctrine  equally  absurd,  though,  at  first  sight, 
seeming  more  plausible. 

Psychical  changes,  upon  this  view,  are  never 
causes  at  all,  but  are  solely  effects.  They  are 
adjectives  depending  upon  the  body,  but  which 
at  the  same  lime  make  absolutely  no  difference  to 
it.  They  do  not  quite  fall  outside  causation,  for 
they  are  events  which  certainly  are  produced  by 
physical  changes.  But  they  enter  the  causal  series 
in  one  character  only.  They  are  themselves  pro- 
duced, but  on  the  other  hand  nothing  ever  results 
from  them.  And  this  does  not  merely  mean  that, 
for  certain  purposes,  you  may  take  primary  qualities 
as  unaffected  by  secondary,  and  may  consider  %^zon6.- 


'  Of  course,  even  on  ihese  hypotheses,  one  link  of  a  series  will 
be  a  cause  of  what  follows,  if  you  take  that  link  in  connection 
with  the  rest  of  the  universe.  Hence  with  regard  to  "  occa- 
sionalism "  we  may  say  that,  since  every  cause  must  be  limited 
more  or  less  artificially,  every  cause  therefore  is  able  to  be  called 
ail  "occasion."  You  may  take  in  further  and  further  conditions, 
until  your  partial  cause  seems  an  item  unimportant,  and  even 
therefore  ine/Tective.  And  here  we  are  on  the  confines  of  absolute 
error.  If  the  "occasion  "  is  divided  from  the  whole  entire  cause, 
and  so  held  to  be  without  an  influence  on  the  effect,  that  is  at 
once  quite  indefensible. 


BODY   AND   SOUL, 


i^i 


ary  qualities  as  idle  adjectives  which  issue  from 
primary.  It  means  that  all  psychical  changes  are 
effects,  brought  about  by  what  is  physical,  while 
themselves  absolutely  without  any  influence  on  the 
succession  of  phenomena.  I  have  been  forced  to 
state  this  view  in  my  own  terms  as,  though  widely 
held,  I  do  not  find  it  anywhere  precisely  expressed. 
Its  adherents  satisfy  themselves  with  metaphors, 
and  rest  on  half  worked  out  comparisons.  And  all 
that  their  exposition,  to  me,  makes  clear,  is  the  con- 
fusion which  it  springs  from. 

The  falseness  of  this  doctrine  can  be  exhibited 
from  two  points  of  view.  It  involves  the  contra- 
diction of  an  adjective  which  makes  no  difference  to 
its  substantive,'  and  the  contradiction  of  an  event  in 
time,  which  is  an  effect  but  not  a  cause.  For  the 
sake  of  brevity  I  shall  here  confine  myself  to  the 
second  line  of  criticism.  I  must  first  endeavour,  in 
my  own  way,  to  give  to  the  materialistic  doctrine  a 
reasonable  form  ;  and  I  will  then  point  out  that  its 
inconsistency  is  inherent  and  not  removable. 

If  we  agree  to  bring  psychical  events  under  the 
head  of  what  is  "  secondary,"  we  may  state  the 
proposed  way  of  connection  as  follows  : 

A~B—C. 

'      i       ' 

Ay  B,  C  is  the  succession  of  primary  qualities, 
and  it  is  taken  to  be  a  true  causal  series.  Between 
the  secondary  products,  a,  /8,  y,  is  no  causal  con- 
nection, nor  do  they  make  any  difference  to  the 
sequence  of  C  from  B  and  of  B  from  A.  They  are, 
each  of  them,  adjectives  which   happen,  but  which 


*  The  same  false  principle,  which  is  employed  in  the  material- 
istic view  of  the  soul,  appears  in  the  equally  materialistic  doctrine 
of  the  Real  Presence. 


328 


REALITY. 


produce  no  consequence.  But,  though  their  succes- 
sion is  not  really  causal,  it  must  none  the  less  appear 
so,  because  it  is  regular.  And  it  must  be  regular, 
since  it  depends  on  a  series  which  is  unalterably 
fixed  by  causation.  And  in  this  way  (it  may  be 
urged)  the  alleged  inconsistency  is  avoided,  and  all 
is  made  harmonious.  We  are  not  forced  into  the 
conclusion  that  the  self-same  cause  can  produce  two 
different  effects.     A  is  not  first  followed  by  mere  B, 

B 
and  then  again  by    |  ,  since  a  is,  in  fact,  irremov- 

able  from  A.  Nor  is  it  necessary  to  suppose  that 
the  sequence  A — B  must  ever  occur  by  itself  For 
u  will,  in  fact,  accompany  A,  and  /3  will  always  occur 
with  B.  Still  this  inseparability  will  in  no  way 
affect  our  result,  which  is  the  outcome  and  expres- 
sion of  a  general  principle.  A  — B — C  is  the  actual 
and  sole  thread  of  causation,  while  «,  fi,  y  are  the 
adjectives  which  idly  adorn  it.  And  hence  these 
latter  must  seem  to  be  that  which  really  they  are 
not.  They  are  in  fact  decorative,  but,  either  always 
or  usually,  so  as  to  appear  constructional. 

This  is  the  best  statement  that  I  can  make  in 
defence  of  my  unwilling  clients,  and  I  have  now  to 
show  that  this  statement  will  not  bear  criticism. 
But  there  is  one  point  on  which  I,  probably,  have 
exceeded  my  instructions.  To  admit  that  the 
sequence  A — B — C  does  not  exist  by  itself  would 
seem  contrary  to  that  view  which  is  more  generally 
held.  Yet,  without  this  admission,  the  inconsistency 
can  be  exhibited  more  easily. 

The  Law  of  Causation  is  the  principle  of  Identity, 
applied  to  the  successive.  Make  a  statement 
involving  succession,  and  you  have  necessarily  made 
a  statement,  which,  if  true,  is  true  always.  Now,  if 
it  is  true  universally  that  B  follows  A,  then  that 
sequence  is  what  we  mean  by  a  causal  law.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  sequence  is  not  universally  true. 


BODY    AND    SOUL. 


;29 


then  it  is  not  true  at  all.  For  B,  in  that  case,  must 
have  followed  something  more  or  less  than  A  ;  and 
hence  the  judgment  A — B  was  certainly  false. 
Thus  a  stated  fact  of  succession  is  untrue,  till  it  has 
been  taken  as  a  fact  of  causation.  And  a  fact  of 
causation  is  truth  which  is,  and  must  be,  universal' 
It  is  an  abstracted  relation,  which  is  either  false 
always,  or  always  true.  And  hence,  if  we  are  able 
to  say  ever  that  B  follows  mere  A,  then  this  proposi- 
tion A — B  is  eternal  verity.  But,  further,  a  truth 
cannot  be  itself  and  at  the  same  time  something 
different.  And  therefore  once  affirm  A — B,  and 
you  can  not  affirm  also  and  as  well  A — j5/3,  if  (that 
is  to  say)  in  both  cases  you  are  keeping  to  the  same 
A.  For  if  the  event  ^  follows,  while  arising  from  no 
difference,  you  must  assert  of  mere  A  both  " — .5" 
and  " — B^y  But  these  two  assertions  are  incom- 
patible. In  the  same  way,  if  Ao.  has,  as  a  conse- 
quence, mere  B,  it  is  impossible  that  bare  A  should 
possess  the  same  consequence.  If  it  seems  other- 
wise, then  certainly  A  was  not  bare,  or  else  a  was 
not  relevant.  And  any  other  conclusion  would  imply 
two  incompatible  assertions  with  regard  to  B} 

Hence  we  may  come  to  a  first  conclusion  about 
the  view  which  makes  an  idle  adjective  of  the  soul. 
If  it  asserts  that  these  adjectives  both  happen,  and 
do  not  happen,  for  no  reason  at  all,  if  it  will  say  that 
the  physical  sequence  is  precisely  the  same,  both 
without  them  and  with  them,  then  such  a  view  flatly 
contradicts  itself.  For  it  not  only  supposes  differ- 
ences,    which     do    not    make    any     difference — a 


'  The  addition  of  "  unconditional "  would  be  surplusage.  Ci>. 
Principles  of  Logic,  p.  485. 

*  The  judgments,  "  B  follows  from  A  "  and  "  jB  follows  from 
Aa,"  are,  if  pure,  not  reconcilable.  The  same  effect  cannot  have 
two  causes,  unless  "  cause  "  is  taken  loosely.  See  Mr.  Bosanquet's 
Lof^ic,  Book  I,  Chapter  vi.  I  have  remarked  further  on  this 
subject  below  in  Chapter  xxiv. 


330 


REALITY. 


supposition  which  is  absurd  ;  but  it  also  believes  in 
a  decoration,  which  at  one  time  goes  with,  and  at 
another  time  stays  away  from  its  construction,  and 
which  is  an  event  which,  equally  in  either  case,  is 
without  any  reason.'  And,  with  this,  perhaps  we 
may  pass  on. 

Let  us  return  to  that  statement  of  the  case  which 
appeared  to  us  more  plausible.  There  is  a  succes- 
sion 

A—B—C 


a        8       y, 

and  in  this  the  secondary  qualities  are  inseparable 
from  the  primary.  A — B — Cis,  in  fact,  never  found 
by  itself,  but  it  is,  for  all  that,  the  true  and  the  only 
causal  sequence.  We  shall,  however,  find  that  this 
way  of  statement  does  but  hide  the  same  mistake 
which  before  was  apparent.  In  the  succession 
above,  unless  there  really  is  more  than  we  are  sup- 
posed to  take  in,  and  unless  a,  ft  7  are  connected 
with  something  outside,  we  have  still  the  old  incon- 
sistency. If  A — B — C  is  the  truth,  then  the  succes- 
sion, which  we  had,  is  in  fact  impossible  ;  and,  if 
the  sequence  is  modified,  then  A — B — C  can  not 
possibly  be  true.  I  will  not  urge  that,  if  it  were 
true,  it  would  at  least  be  undiscoverable,  since,  by 
the  hypothesis,  a  is  inseparable  from  A.  I  admit 
that  we  may  postulate  sometimes  where  we  cannot 
prove  or  observe ;  and  I  prefer  to  show  that  such 
a  postulate  is  here  self-contradictory.  It  is  assumed 
that  a  is  an  adjective  indivisible  from  A,  but  is  an 
adjective  which  at  the  same  time  makes  no  differ- 
ence to  its  being.  Or  a,  at  any  rate,  makes  no 
difference  to  the  action  of  A,  but  is  perfectly  inert. 
But.  if  so,  then,  as  before.  A  possesses  two  predi- 
cates  incompatible   with  each  other.      We    cannot 

'  If  there  were  a  reason,  then  >n<rre  A  would  no  longer  be  the 
cause  of  both  B  and  Bfi.     I  shall  return  to  this  lower  down. 


BODY   AND   SOUL. 


33« 


indeed  say,  as  before,  that  in  fact  it  is  followed  first 
by  mere  B,  and  then  again  by  B^.  But  we,  none 
the  less,  are  committed  to  assertions  which  clash. 
We  hold  that  A  produces  /?.  and  that  A  produces 
B^ ;  and  one  of  these  judgments  must  be  false. 
For,  \{  A  produces  mereB,  then  it  does  not  produce 
v9/3.  Hence  fi  is  either  an  event  which  is  a  gratui- 
tous accident,  or  else  a  must  have  somehow  (indi- 
rectly or  directly)  made  this  difference  in  B.  But, 
if  so,  «  is  not  inert,  but  is  a  part-cause  of  B  \  and 
therefore  the  sequence  of  B  from  mere  A  is  false.' 
Tiie  plausibility  of  our  statement  has  proved  illu- 
sory. 

I  am  loath  lo  perplex  the  question  by  subtleties, 
which  would  really  carry  us  no  further  ;  but  I  will 
notice  a  possible  evasion  of  the  issue.  The  secon- 
dary qualities,  I  may  be  told,  do  not  depend  each  on 
one  primary,  but  are  rather  the  adjectives  of  rela- 
tions between  these.  They  attend  on  certain 
relations,  yet  make  no  difference  to  what  follows. 
But  here  the  old  and  unresolved  contradiction  re-- 
mains.  1 1  cannot  be  true  that  any  relation  (say  of 
A  to  E),  which  produces  another  relation  (say  of  /i 
to  F),  should  bofh  produce  this  latter  naked,  and  also 
attended  by  an  adjective,  ^.  One  of  these  asser- 
tions miisl  be  false,  and,  with  it,  your  conclusion 
It  is  in  short  impossible  to  have  differences,  which 
come  without  a  difference,  or  which  make  no  differ- 
ence to  what  follows  them.  The  attempt  involves 
a  contradiction,  explicit  or  veiled,  but  in  either  case 
ruinous  to  the  theory  which  adopts  it. 


We  have  now  finished  our  discussion  of  erroneous 
views.*     We    have  seen   that    to  deny    the    active 

'  The  re.idcr  will  remember  that  /3  (by  the  hypothesis)  cannot 
follow  directly  from  a.     It  is  taken  as  dependent  solely  on  £. 

*  I  may  perh.ifts,  in  this  connection,  be  expected  to  say  some- 
thing on  the  Conservation  of  Energy.  I  am  most  unwilling  to  do 
this.     One  who,  like  myself,  stands  outside  the  sciences  which 


3S2 


REALITY. 


connection  of  body  and  soul   is  either  dangerous  or/ 
impossible.      It  is   impossible,    unless   we   are    pr^ 


use  this  idea,  can  hardly  hope  to  succeed  in  apprehending  it 
rightly.  He  constantly  fails  to  distinguish  between  a  mere 
working  conception  and  a  statement  of  fact  Thus,  for  exannple. 
■'  energy  of  position  "  and  "  potential  energy  "  are  phrases,  which 
in  their  actual  employment,  doubtless,  are  useful  and  accurate. 
But,  to  speak  strictly,  they  are  nonsense.  If  a  thing  disappears 
into  conditions,  which  will  hereafter  produce  it,  then  most 
assuredly  in  the  interim  //  does  not  exist  ;  and  it  is  surely  only  by 
a  licence  that  you  can  call  the  non-e.xistent  "in  a  state  of  con- 
servation." And  hence,  passing  on,  I  will  next  take  the  Conser- 
vation of  Energy  to  mean  that  at  any  moment  actual  matter  and 
actual  motion  are  an  unaltered  quantity.  And  this  constancy 
may  hold  good  either  in  each  of  several  physical  systems,  or  again 
in  Nature  as  a  whole  (Chapter  xxii).  Now,  if  the  idea  is  put 
forward  as  a  hypothesis  for  working  use  only,  I  offer  no  criticisn> 
of  that  which  is  altogether  beyond  me.  But,  if  it  is  presented, 
on  the  other  hand,  as  a  statement  of  (act,  1  will  say  at  once  that 
I  see  no  reason  to  accept  it  as  true ;  and  I  am  quite  sure  that  it 
is  not  provable.  If,  for  the  sake  of  argument  however,  we  accept 
the  quantitative  constancy  of  matter  and  motion,  I  do  not  find 
that  this  tells  us  anything  as  to  the  position  of  the  soul.  For, 
although  mind  influences  body  and  body  alters  mind,  the  quantity 
may  throughout  remain  precisely  the  same.  The  loss  and  gain, 
on  the  psychical  and  physical  side,  may  each,  upon  the  whole, 
exactly  balance  the  other  ;  and  thus  the  physical  energy  of  the 
system  may  be  thoroughly  preserved.  If,  however,  any  one 
insists  that  motion  always  must  be  taken  as  resulting  from  motion, 
even  then  he  may  avoid  the  conclusion  that  psychical  events  are 
not  causes.  He  may  fall  back  on  some  form  of  the  two  parallel 
series  which  only  seem  to  be  connected.  Or  he  may  betake 
himself  to  a  hypothesis  which  still  maintains  their  causal  con- 
nection. An  arrangement  is  possible,  by  which  soul  and  body 
make  a  difference  to  each  other,  while  the  succession  on  each 
side  appears,  and  may  be  treated,  as  independent.  The  losses 
and  gains  upon  each  side  amongst  the  different  threads  of  causal 
sequence  might  counterbalance  one  another.  They  might 
hinder  and  help  each  other,  so  that  in  the  end  all  would  look- 
as  if  they  really  did  nothing,  and  as  if  each  series  was  left  alone 
to  pursue  its  own  private  course.  Such  an  arrangement  seems 
undeniably  possible,  but  I  am  far  from  suggesting  that  it  is  fact. 
For  1  reject  the  principle  which  would  force  us,  without  any 
reason,  to  entertain  such  subtleties. 

I  may  be  allowed  to  remark  in  conclusion  that  those,  who  hold 
to  the  doctrine  of  "  Conservation,"  and  who  use  this  in  any  way 


BODY   AND    SOUL. 


333 


pared  to  contradict  ourselves,  to  treat  the  soul  as  a 
mere  adjective  not  influencing  the  body.  And  to 
accept,  on  the  other  hand,  two  coinciding  and 
parallel  series  is  to  adopt  a  conclusion  opposed  to 
the  main  bulk  of  appearance.  Nor  for  such  a  deser- 
tion of  probability  can  I  find  any  warrant.  The 
common  view,  that  soul  and  body  make  a  difference 
to  one  another,  is  in  the  end  proof  against  objection. 
And  I  will  endeavour  now  to  set  it  out  in  a  defensi- 
ble form. 

Let  me  say  at  once  that,  by  a  causal  connection 
of  mind  with  matter.  I  do  not  mean  that  one  influ- 
ences the  other  when  bare.      I  do  not  mean  that  soul  I 
by  itself  ever  acts  upon  body,  or  that  mere  bodily/ 
states  have  an  action  on  bare  soul.      Whether  any-l 
thing  of  the  kind  is  possible,  I   shall  enquire  lower 
down  ;  but  I  certainly  see  no  reason  to  regard  it  as 
actual.       I   understand  that,    normally,  we  have  an  j 
event  with  two  sides,  and  that  these  two  sides,  taken  / 
together,  are  the  inseparable  cause  of  the  event  which/ 
succeeds.     What  is  the  effect  ?     It  is  a  state  of  soul 
going  along   with  a  state  of  body,  or  rather  with  a 
state  of  those  parts  of  our  organism,  which  are  con- 
sidered to  be  in  immediate  relation  with  mind.     And 
what  are  we  to  say  is  the  cause?     It  is  a  double 
event  of  the  same  kind,  and  the  two  sides  of  it,  both 
in    union,    produce    the    effect.      The    alteration   of 
mind,  which    results,  is   not  the  effect   of  mind  or 
body,  acting  singly  or  alone,  but  of  both   working 
at  once.     And  the  state  of  body,  which  accompanies 
it,    is  again   the    product  of  two    influences.      It  is 
brought  about  neither  by  bare  body,  nor  yet  again 

as  bearing  on  our  views  about  the  soul,  may  fairly  be  expected 
to  make  some  effort.  It  seems  incumbent  on  them  to  try  to 
reconcile  the  succession  of  psychical  events  with  the  law  of 
Causation.  No  one  is  bound  to  be  intelligible  outside  his  own 
science,  I  am  quite  convinced  as  to  that.  But  such  a  plea  is  good 
only  in  the  mouths  of  those  who  are  willing  to  remain  inside. 
And  1  must  venture,  respectfully  but  firmly,  to  insist  on  this 
point. 


V 


334 


REALITY. 


by  bare  soul.  Hence  a  difference,  made  in  one  side, 
must  make  a  difference  to  the  other  side,  and  it 
makes  a  difference  also  to  both  sides  of  what  follows. 
And,  though  this  statement  will  receive  later  some 
qualification  (p.  337).  the  causal  connection  of  the 
soul's  events,  in  general,  is  inseparably  double. 

In  physiology  and  in  psychology  we,  in  practice,! 
disregard  this  complication.  We  for  convenience/^ 
sake  regard  as  the  cause,  or  as  the  effect,  what  is  iri 
reality  but  a  prominent  condition  or  consequence.! 
And  such  a  mutilation  of  phenomena  is  essential  ta 
progress.  We  speak  of  an  intellectual  sequence,  iiv 
which  the  conclusion,  as  a  psychical  event,  is  the 
.effect  of  the  premises.  We  talk  as  if  the  antecedent 
mental  state  were  truly  the  cause,  and  were  not 
merely  one  part  of  it.  Where,  in  short,  we  find  that 
on  either  side  the  succession  is  regular,  we  regard  it 
as  independent.  And  it  is  only  where  irregularity 
is  forced  on  our  attention,  that  we  perceive  body 
and  mind  to  interfere  with  one  another.  But,  at 
this  point,  practical  convenience  has  unawares  led 
us  into  difficulty.  We  are  puzzled  now  to  compre- 
hend how  that,  which  was  independent,  has  been 
induced  to  leave  its  path.  We  begin  to  seek  the 
cause  which  forces  it  to  exert  and  to  suffer  influence  ; 
and,  with  this,  we  are  well  on  the  road  to  false 
theory  and  ruinous  error. 

But  the  truth  is  that  no  mere  psychical  sequence 
is  a  fact,  or  in  any  way  exists.  With  each  of  its 
members  is  conjoined  always  a  physical  event,  and 
these  physical  events  enter  into  every  link  of  causa- 
tion. The  state  of  mind,  or  body,  is  here  never  more 
than  part-cause,  or  again  more  than  part-effect.  We 
may  attend  to  either  of  the  sides,  which  for  our 
purpose  is  prominent  ;  we  may  ignore  the  action  of 
the  other  side,  where  it  is  constant  and  regular ;  but 
we  cannot  deny  that  both  really  contribute  to  the 
effect.  Thus  we  speak  of  feelings  and  of  ideas  as 
influencing  the  body.     And  so   they  do,  since  they 


BODY   AND    SOUL. 


335 


make  a  difference  to  the  physical  result,  and  since 
this  result  is  not  the  consequence  from  a  mere 
physical  cause.  But  feelings  and  ideas,  on  the 
other  hand,  neither  act  nor  exist  independent  of 
body.  The  altered  physical  state  is  the  effect  of 
conditions,  which  are,  at  once,  both  psychical  and 
physical.  We  find  the  same  duplicity  when  we 
consider  alterations  of  the  soul.  An  incoming  sen- 
sation may  be  regarded  as  caused  by  the  body ;  but 
this  view  is,  taken  generally,  onesided  and  incorrect. 
The  prominent  condition  has  been  singled  out.  and 
the  residue  ignored.  And,  if  we  deny  the  influence 
of  the  antecedent  psychical  state,  we  have  pushed 
allowable  licence  once  more  into  mistake. 

The  soul  and  its  organism  are  each  a  phenomenaV 
series.  Each,  to  speak  in  general,  is  implicated  in 
the  changes  of  the  other.  Their  supposed  independi 
ence  is  therefore  imaginary,  and  to  overcome  it  by 
invoking  a  faculty  such  as  Will — is  the  effort  to  heal 
a  delusion  by  means  of  a  fiction.  In  every  psy- 
chical state  we  have  to  do  with  two  sides,  though 
we  disregard  one.  Thus  in  the  "  Association  of 
Ideas  "  we  have  no  right  to  forget  that  there  is  a 
physical  sequence  essentially  concerned  And  the 
law  of  Association  must  itself  be  extended,  to  take 
in  connections  formed  between  physical  and  psych- 
ical elements.  The  one  of  these  phenomena,  on 
its  re-occurrence,  may  bring  back  the  other.  In  this 
way  a  psychical  state,  once  conjoined  with  a  physical, 
may  normally  restore  it  ;  and  hence  this  psychical 
state  can  be  treated  as  the  cause.  It  is  not  properly 
the  cause,  since  it  is  not  the  whole  cause  ;  but  it  is 
most  certainly  an  effective  and  differential  condition. 
The  physical  event  is  not  the  result  from  a  mere 
physical  state.  And  if  the  idea  or  feeling  had  been 
absent,  or  if  again  it  had  not  acted,  this  physical 
event  would  not  have  happened. 

I  am  aware  that  such  a  statement  is  not  an  ex- 
planation, but  I  insist  that  in  the  end  no  explanation 


336 


REALITY. 


IS  possible.  There  are  many  enquiries  which  are 
legitimate.  To  ask  about  the  "  seat  "  of  the  soul, 
and  about  the  ultimate  modes  of  sequence  and  co- 
existence, both  physical  and  psychical,  is  proper  and 
necessary.  We  may  remain  incapable,  in  part,  of 
resolving  these  problems ;  but  at  all  events  the 
questions  they  put  are  essentially  answerable,  how- 
ever little  we  are  called  upon  to  deal  with  them 
here.  But  the  connection  of  body  and  soul  is  in  its 
essence  inexplicable,  and  the  further  enquiry  as  to  the 
"  how  "  is  irrational  and  hopeless.  For  soul  and 
body  are  not  realities.  Each  is  a  series,  artificially 
abstracted  from  the  whole,  and  each,  as  we  have 
seen,  is  self-contradictory.  We  cannot  in  the  end 
understand  how  either  comes  to  exist,  and  we  know 
that  both,  if  understood,  would,  as  such,  have  been 
transmuted.  To  comprehend  them,  while  each  is 
fixed  in  its  own  untrue  character,  is  utterly  impos- 
sible. But,  if  so,  their  way  of  connection  must 
remain  unintelligible. 

And  the  same  conclusion  may  be  reached  by  con- 
sidering the  causal  series.  In  this  normally  the 
two  sides  are  inseparable  from  each  other,  and  it 
was  by  a  licence  only  that  we  were  permitted  ever  to 
disregard  one  side.  But,  with  this  result,  still  we 
have  not  reached  the  true  causal  connection.  It  is 
only  by  a  licence  that  in  the  end  both  sides  taken 
together  can  be  abstracted  from  the  universe.  The 
cause  is  not  the  true  cause  unless  it  is  the  whole 
cause ;  and  it  is  not  the  whole  cause  unless  in  it  you 
include  the  environment,  the  entire  mass  of  un- 
specified conditions  in  the  background.  Apart  from 
this  you  have  regularities,  but  you  have  not  attained 
to  intelligible  necessity.  But  the  entire  mass  of 
conditions  is  not  merely  inexhaustible,  but  also  it  is 
infinite  ;  and  thus  a  complete  knowledge  of  causation 
is  theoretically  impossible.'     Our  known  causes  and 


'  Cf.  Chapter  vi. 


BODY    AND   SOUL. 


J37 


effects  are  held  always  by  a  licence  and  partly  on 
sufferance.  To  observe  regularities,  to  bring  one 
under  the  other  as  far  as  possible,  to  remove  every- 
where what  can  be  taken  as  in  practice  irrelevant 
and  thus  to  reduce  the  number  of  general  facts — 
we  cannot  hope  for  more  than  this  in  explaining 
concrete  phenomena.  And  to  seek  for  more  in  the 
connection  of  body  and  soul  is  to  pursue  a  chimera. 

But,  before  we  proceed,  there  are  points  which 
require  consideration.  A  state  of  soul  seems  not 
always  to  follow,  even  in  part,  from  a  preceding 
state.  And  an  arrangement  of  mere  physical  con- 
ditions seems  to  supply  the  whole  origin  of  a  psy- 
chical life.  And  again,  when  the  sou!  is  suspended 
and  once  more  reappears,  the  sole  cause  of  the 
reappearance  seems  to  lie  in  the  body.  I  will  begin 
by  dealing  with  the  question  about  the  soul's  origin. 
We  must  remember,  in  the  first  place,  that  mere, 
body  is  an  artificial  abstraction,  and  that  its  separa-[ 
tion  from  mind  disappears  in  the  Whole.  And,  when 
the  abstraction  is  admitted  and  when  we  are  stand- 
ing on  this  biisis,  it  is  not  certain,  even  then,  tliat 
any  matter  exists  unconnected  with  soul  (Chapter 
xxii.).  Now,  if  we  bear  in  mind  these  considera- 
tions, we  need  not  seek  to  deny  that  physical  con- 
ditions can  be  the  origin  of  a  psychical  life.  We 
might  have  at  one  moment  a  material  arrangement 
and  at  the  next  moment  we  might  find  that  this 
arrangement  was  modified,  and  was  accompanied 
by  a  certain  degree  of  soul.  Even  if  this  as  a  fact 
does  not  happen,  I  can  find  absolutely  no  reason  to 
doubt  that  it  is  possible,  nor  does  it  seem  to  me  to 
clash  with  our  preceding  view.  But  we  must  be- 
ware of  misunderstandings.  We  can  hardly  believe, 
in  the  first  place,  that  a  soul,  highly  developed, 
arises  thus  all  at  once.  And  we  must  remember,  in 
the  second  place,  that  a  soul,  which  is  the  result  of 
mere  matter,  on  the  other  hand  at  once  qualifies  and 

A.  R.  2 


33S 


REALITY. 


reacts  on  that  matter.  Mere  body  will,  even  here, 
never  act  upon  bare  mind.  The  event  is  single  at 
one  moment,  and  is  double  at  the  next ;  but  in  this 
twofold  result  the  sides  will  imply,  and  will  make  a 
difference  to  one  another.  They  are  a  joint-effect, 
and  in  what  follows,  whether  as  passive  or  active, 
each  is  nothing  by  itself.  The  soul  is  never  mere 
soul,  and  the  body,  as  soon  as  ever  the  soul  has 
emerged,  is  no  longer  bare  body.  And,  when  this 
L  is  understood,  we  may  assent  to  the  physical  origin 
of  mind.  But  we  must  remember  that  the  material 
cause  of  the  soul  will  be  never  the  whole  cause. 
Matter  is  a  phenomenal  isolation  of  one  aspect  of 
reality.  And  the  event,  which  results  from  any 
material  arrangement,  really  pre-supposes  and  de- 
pends on  the  entire  background  of  conditions.  It 
is  only  through  a  selection,  and  by  a  licence,  that  a 
mere  physical  cause  can  anywhere  be  supposed  to 
exist.' 

And  the  same  conclusion  holds  when  we  consider 
the  suspension  of  a  soul.  The  psychical  life  of  an 
organism  seems  more  or  less  to  disappear,  and 
again  to  be  restored,  and  we  have  to  ask  whether 
this  restoration  is  effected  by  mere  matter.  We 
may  distinguish  here  two  questions,  one  of  which 
concerns  fact,  and  the  other  possibility.  It  is  first, 
I  think,  impossible  to  be  sure  that  anywhere  psych- 
ical functions  have  ceased  wholly.  You  certainly 
cannot  conclude  from  the  absence  of  familiar  phen- 
omena to  the  absence  of  everything,  however  differ- 
ent in  degree  or  in  kind.  And  whether,  as  a  fact, 
anywhere  in  an  organism  its  soul  is  quite  suspended,  I 
do  not  pretend  to  know.  But  assume  for  argument's 
sake  that  this  is  so,  it  does  not  lead  to  a  new  diffi- 
culty. We  have  a  case  once  more  here,  where 
physical  conditions  are  the  origin  of  a  psychical 
result,  and  there  seems  no  need  to  add  anything  to 

'  Whether  mere  soul  can  act  on  or  produce  matter,  I  shall 

enquire  lower  down. 


BODY    AND   SOUL. 


539 


our  discussion  of  this  point.  And  vvliat  we  are  to 
say  the  soul  is  in  the  interval,  during  which  it  has 
ceased  to  exist,  we  have  already  enquired. 

And  under  this  head  of  suspension  may  fall  all 
those  cases,  where  a  psychical  association  seems  to 
have  become  merely  physical.  In  psychology  we 
have  connections,  which  once  certainly  or  possibly 
were  conscious,  but  now,  in  part  or  altogether,  and 
either  always  or  at  times,  appear  to  happen  without 
any  psychical  links.  But,  however  interesting  for 
psychology.'  these  cases  have  little  metaphysical 
importance.  And  I  will  content  myself  here  with 
repeating  our  former  warnings.  It  is,  in  the  first 
place,  not  easy  to  be  sure  of  our  ground,  when  we 
wholly  e-xclude  an  unconscious  process  in  the  soul. 
But,  even  when  this  has  been  excluded,  and  we  are 
left  with  bare  body,  the  body  will  be  no  more  than 
relatively  bare.  We  shall  have  reached  something 
where  the  soul  in  question  is  absent,  but  where  we 
cannot  say  that  soul  is  absent  altogether.  For  there 
is  no  part  of  Nature,  which  we  can  say  (Chapter 
x.xii.)  is  not  directly  organic  to  a  soul  or  souls. 
And  the  merely  physical,  we  saw.  is  in  any  case  a 
mere  abstraction.  It  is  set  apart  from,  and  still  de- 
pends on,  the  whole  of  experience. 

I  wilt  briefly  notice  another  point.  It  may  be 
objected  that  our  view  implies  interference  with,  or 
suspension  of,  the  laws  of  matter  or  of  mind.  And 
it  will  be  urged  that  such  interference  is  wholly  un- 
tenable. This  objection  would  rest  on  a  misunder- 
standing. Every  law  which  is  true  is  true  always 
and  for  ever ;  but,  upon  the  other  hand,  every  law 
is  emphatically  an  abstraction.  And  hence  obviously 
all  laws  are  true  only  in  the  abstract.  Modify  the 
conditions,  add  some  elements  to  make  the  connec- 
tion more  concrete,  and  the  law  is  transcended.      It 

'  Psychology,  I  should  say,  has  a  right  to  take  the  soul  as  sus- 
jiended,  or  generally  as  absent,  so  far  as  is  convenient.  1  doubt 
if  there  is  any  other  limit. 


340 


REALITV. 


is  not  interfered  with,  and  it  holds,  but  it  does  not 
hold  of  this  case.  It  remains  perfectly  true,  but  is 
inapplicable  where  the  conditions  which  it  supposes 
are  absent 


I  have  dwelt  at  length  on  the  connection  of  body 
and  soul,  but  it  presents  a  series  of  questions  which 
we  have,  even  yet,  not  discussed.  I  must  endeavour 
.  to  dispose  of  these  briefly.  Can  we  say  that  bare 
soul  ever  acts  upon  body,  and  can  soul  exist  at  all 
without  matter,  and  if  so,  in  what  sense  .''  In  our 
experience  assuredly  bare  soul  is  not  found.  Its 
existence  there,  and  its  action,  are  inseparable  from 
matter  ;  but  a  question  obviously  can  be  asked  with 
regard  to  what  is  possible.  As  to  this,  I  would 
begin  by  observing  that,  if  bare  soul  exists,  I  hardly 
see  how  we  could  prove  its  existence.  We  have 
seen  (Chapter  xxii.)  that  we  can  set  no  bounds  to 
the  variety  of  bodies.  An  extended  organism 
inight,  none  the  less,  be  widely  scattered  and  dis- 
continuous ;  and  again  organisms  might  be  shared 
wholly  or  partially  between  souls.  Further,  of  what- 
ever extended  material  a  body  is  composed,  there 
remains  the  question  of  its  possible  functions  and 
properties.  I  cannot  see  how,  on  the  one  hand,  we 
can  fix  the  limits  of  these.  But  upon  the  other 
hand,  if  we  fail  to  do  so,  I  do  not  understand  by 
what  process  we  even  begin  to  infer  the  existence  of 
bare  soul.'  And  our  result  so  far  must  be  this.  We 
may  agree  that  soul,  acting  or  existing  in  separation 
from  body,  is  a  thing  which  is  possible  ;  but  we  are 
still  without  the  smallest  reason,  further,  for  regard- 
ing it  as  real 

But  is  such  a  soul  indeed  possible  ?  Or  let  us 
rather  ask,  first,  what  such  a  soul  would  mean.  For, 
if  disconnected  from  all  extension,  it  might  even 
then  not  be  naked.     One  can  imagine  an  arrange- 

'  See    further    The    Evidences    of    Spiritualism,    Fortnightly 
Keview,  No.  ccxxviii. 


BODY   AND   SOUL. 


341 


ment  of  secondary  qualities,  not  extended  but 
constant;  and  this  might  accompany  psychical  hfe 
and  serve  as  a  body  (p.  268).  We  have  no  reason 
for  seriously  entertaining  this  idea,  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  there  any  argument  which  would  prove  it 
impossible  ?  And  we  may  come  to  the  same  con- 
clusion with  regard  to  bare  soul.  This  would 
mean  a  psychical  series  devoid  of  every  quality 
that  could  serve  as  an  organism.  Of  course  if  it 
were  a  "spirit,"  immaterial  and  at  the  same  time 
localized  and  extended,  it  would  be  inconsistent 
with  itself.  But  there  is  no  necessity  for  our  falling 
into  such  self-contradiction.  A  psychical  series 
without  extension  or  locality  in  space,  I  presume,  is 
conceivable.  And  this  bare  series  might,  for  all  we 
know,  normally,  or  on  occasion,  even  influence 
body.  Nay,  for  all  that  I  can  perceive,  such  a 
naked  soul  might  do  more.  Just  as  we  saw  that 
soul  can  follow  from  material  conditions,  so,  in  the 
course  of  events,  some  matter  might  itself  result 
from  soul.  All  these  things  are  "  possible  "  in  this 
sense,  that,  within  our  knowledge,  they  cannot  any 
of  them  be  proved  to  be  unreal.  But  they  are 
mere  idle  possibilities.  We  can  find  no  further 
ground  for  entertaining  them,  and  in  an  estimate  of 
probability  we  could  not  give  them  an  appreciable 
value.  But  surely  that,  which  we  have  no  more 
reason  for  taking  as  true,  is  nothing  which  we  need 
trouble  ourselves  to  consider.  We  have  in  fact  no 
choice  but  to  treat  it  as  wholly  non-existent.' 

We  have  now  discussed  the  general  connection  of 
soul  with  body.  We  have  seen  that  neither  is 
reality.  Each  is  a  phenomenal  series,  and  their 
members,  as  events  in  time,  are  causally  related. 
The  changes  on  one  side  in   their  sequence  are  in- 

'  These  worthless  fancies  really  possess  no  kind  of  interest  at 
all.  The  continuance  of  the  soul  after  death  will  be  touched  on 
hereafter.  On  the  general  nature  of  the  Possible,  see,  further. 
Chapters  xxiv.  and  xxvii. 


I 


34* 


REALITY. 


separable  from,  and  affected  by,  the  changes  on  the 
other  side.  This,  so  far  as  body  and  soul  are  con- 
nected at  all,  is  the  normal  course  of  things.  But 
when  we  went  on  to  investigate,  we  found  a  differ- 
ence. The  existence  and  action  of  bare  soul  is  a 
mere  possibility.  We  have  no  further  reason  to 
believe  in  it ;  nor,  if  it  were  fact,  do  I  see  how  we 
should  be  able  to  discover  it.  But  the  existence  of 
mere  body,  and  the  appearance  of  soul  as  its  con- 
sequence, and  again  the  partial  absence  or  abeyance 
of  psychical  links,  we  found  much  more  than  pos- 
sible. When  properly  interpreted,  though  we  cannot 
prove  that  these  are  facts,  they  have  very  great 
probability.  Still  there  is  not.  after  all,  the  smallest 
ground  to  suppose  that  mere  matter  directly  acts 
upon  psychical  states.  To  gain  an  accurate  view 
of  this  connection  in  all  its  features  is  exceedingly 
difficult.  But  what  is  important  for  metaphysics,  is 
to  realize  clearly  tliat  the  interest  of  such  details  is 
secondary.  Since  the  phenomenal  series,  in  any 
case,  come  together  in  the  Absolute,  since  their 
special  characters  must  be  lost  there  and  be  dis- 
solved in  what  transcends  them — the  existence  by 
itself  of  either  body  or  soul  is  illusory.  Their 
separation  may  be  used  for  particular  purposes,  but 
it  is,  in  the  end,  an  untrue  or  a  provisional  abstrac- 
tion. 


It  is  necessary,  before  ending  this  chapter,  to  sayi 
something  on  the  relation  of  soul  to  soul.     The  way] 
of  communication    between    souls,  and  again  their 
sameness  and    difference,  are    points  on  which  we 
must   be  careful   to  guard  against  error.      It  is  cer- 
tain,   in    the    first    place,   that    experiences    are   all  ' 
separate    from    each    other.      However  much   their 
contents  are  identical,  they  are  on   the  other  hand 
made  different  by  appearing  as  elements  in  distinct 
centres  of  feeling.      The   immediate  experiences  of 
finite  beings  cannot,  as  such,  come  together ;  and  to 


BODY    AND    SOUL. 


343 


be  possessed  directly  of  what  is  personal  to  the 
mind  of  another,  would  in  the  end  be  unmeaning. 
Thus  souls,  in  a  sense  at  least,  are  separate ;  but, 
upon  the  other  hand,  they  are  able  to  act  on  one 
other.  And  I  will  begin  by  enquiring  how,  in  fact, 
they  exercise  this  influence. 

The  direct  action  of  soul  on  soul  is,  for  all  we 
know,  possible ;  but  we  have,  at  the  same  time,  no 
reason  for  regarding  it  as  more.  That  which 
influences,  and  that  which  acts,  is,  so  far  as  we 
know,  always  the  outside  of  our  bodies.  Nor,  even 
if  we  admit  abnormal  perception  and  influence  at  a 
■distance,  need  we  modify  this  result.  For  here  the 
natural  inference  would  be  to  a  medium  extended  in 
space,  and  of  course,  like  "  ether,"  quite  material. 
And  in  this  way  the  abnormal  connection,  if  it 
exists,  does  not  differ  in  kind  from  what  is  familiar. 
Again  the  inside  of  one  organism  might,  I  presume, 
act  directly  on  the  inside  of  another.  But,  if  this  is 
possible,  we  need  not  therefore  consider  it  as  actual. 
Nor  do  such  enquiries  possess  genuine  metaphysical 
interest.  For  the  influence  of  the  internal,  whether 
body  or  soul,  is  not  less  effective  because  it  operates 
through,  and  with,  the  outside  ;  nor  would  it  gain  in 
reality  by  becoming  direct.  And  with  this  we  may 
dismiss  an  idea,  misemployed  by  superstition,  but 
from  which  no  conclusion  of  the  smallest  importance 
could  follow.  A  direct  connection  between  souls  we 
cannot  say  is  impossible,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  we 
find  no  good  reason  for  supposing  it  to  exist.  The 
possibility  seems,  in  addition,  to  be  devoid  of  all 
interest. 


We  may  assume  then  that  souls  do  not  influence ; 
■each  other,  except  through  their  bodies.  And  hence  I 
it  is  only  by  this  way  that  they  are  able  to  communi- 
cate. Alterations  of  the  phenomenal  group,  which 
I  call  my  body,  produce  further  changes  in  the 
physical    environment.       And    thus,   indirectly    or 


344 


REALITY. 


directly,  other  organisms  are  altered,  with  conse- 
quent eflects  on  the  course  of  their  accompanying 
souls.  This  account,  which  is  true  of  my  soul, 
holds  good  also  with  others.  The  world  is  such 
that  we  can  make  the  same  intellectual  construction. 
We  can,  more  or  less,  set  up  a  scheme,  in  which 
every  one  has  a  place,  a  system  constant  and  orderly, 
and  in  which  the  relations  apprehended  by  each 
percipient  coincide.  Why  and  how  this  comes 
about  we  in  the  end  cannot  understand  ;  but  it  is 
such  a  Uniformity  of  Nature  which  makes  com- 
munication possible.' 

But  this  may  suggest  to  us  a  doubt.  If  such 
alterations  of  bodies  are  the  sole  means  which  we 
possess,  for  conveying  what  is  in  us,  can  we  be  sure 
in  the  end  that  we  really  have  conveyed  it .''  For 
suppose  that  the  contents  of  our  various  souls 
differed  radically,  might  we  not  still,  on  the  same 
ground,  be  assured  of  their  sameness  ?  The  objec- 
tion is  serious,  and  must  be  admitted  in  part  to  hold 
good.  I  do  not  think  we  can  be  sure  that  the 
sensible  qualities,  we  perceive,  are  for  every  one  the 
same.  We  infer  from  the  apparent  identity  of  our 
structure  that  this  is  so  ;  and  our  conclusion,  though 
not  proved,  possesses  high  probability.  And, 
again,  it  may  be  impossible  in  fact  that,  while  the 
relations  are  constant,  the  qualities  should  vary  ;  but 
to  assert  this  would  be  to  pass  beyond  the  limits  of. 
our  knowledge.  What,  however,  we  are  convincedf 
of,  is  briefly  this,  that  we  understand  and,  again,  are] 
ourselves  understood.  There  is,  indeed,  a  theoretic- 
al possibility  that  these  other  bodies  are  without 
any  souls,^  or  that,  while  behaving  as  if  they  under- 


'  Cf  Chapter  x.xii.  There  may,  so  far  as  I  see,  be  many 
systems  of  souls,  each  system  without  a  way  of  communication 
with  the  others.  On  this  point  we  seem  to  be  without  any 
means  of  judging. 

*  I  do  not  mean  that  it  is  possible  that  ray  soul  should  contairt 
all  the  experience  which  exists. 


BODY   AND    SOUL. 


345 


Stood   us,  their  souls  really  remain  apart  in  worlds 
shut  up  from  ours.      But,  when  this  bare  possibility 
is  exckided,  the  question  stands  thus.     A   common ,. 
understanding  being  admitted,  how  much  does  that  | 
imply  ?     What  is  the  minimum  of  sameness  that  we 
need  suppose  to  be  involved  in  it  ? 

It  might  be  interesting  elsewhere  to  pursue  this 
question  at  length,  but  I  must  content  myself  here 
with  an  attempt  briefly  to  indicate  the  answer.  The 
fact  is  that,  in  the  main,  we  behave  as  if  our  internalj 
worlds  were  the  same.  But  this  fact  means  that, 
for  each  one,  the  inner  systems  coincide.  Through 
all  their  detail  these  several  orders  must  lead  to  the 
same  result.  But,  if  so,  we  may  go  further,  and 
may  conclude  that  each  comes  to  the  same  thing. 
What  is  the  amount  of  variety  then  which  such 
coinciding  orders  will  admit  ?  We  must,  I  presume,  ' 
answer  that,  for  all  we  know,  the  details  may  be 
different,  but  that  the  principles  cannot  vary. 
There  seems  to  be  a  point  beyond  which,  if  laws, 
and  systems  come  to  the  same  thing,  they  must  bci 
actually  the  same.  And  the  higher  we  mount  from  , 
facts  of  sense,  and  the  wider  our  principles  have  I 
become,  the  more  nearly  we  have  approached  to 
this  point  of  identity.  Thus  sensible  qualities,  we 
may  suppose  at  one  end,  are  largely  divergent  ^\ 
while,  if  we  rise  high  enough  at  the  other  end,  we 
must  postulate  sameness.  And,  between  these  two 
extremes,  as  we  advance,  the  probability  increases 
that  coincidence  results  from  identical  character.  It 
is,  for  example,  more  likely  that  we  share  our 
general  morality  with  another  man,  than  that  we 
both  have  the  same  tastes  or  odours  in  common. 
And  with  this  I  will  pass  from  a  subject,  which 
seems  both  difficult  and  interesting,  but  which  for 
metaphysics  possesses  but  secondary  importance. 
Whatever  variety  there  may  be,  cannot  extend  to 
first  principles  ;  and  all  variety  comes  together,  and 
is  transformed,  in  the  Absolute. 


346 


REALITY. 


But  there  is  a  natural  mistake  which,  perhaps,  I  / 
should  briefly  notice.  Our  inner  worlds,  I  may  be 
told,  are  divided  from  each  other,  but  the  outer 
world  of  experience  is  common  to  all  ;  and  it  is  by 
standing  on  this  basis  that  we  are  able  to  communi- 
cate. Such  a  statement  would  be  incorrect.  Nty 
external  sensations  are  no  less  private  to  myself 
than  are  my  thoughts  or  my  feelings.  In  either 
case  my  experience  falls  within  my  own  circle,  a 
circle  closed  on  the  outside  ;  and,  with  all  its  ele- 
ments alike,  every  sphere  is  opaque  to  the  others 
which  surro.und  it.  With  regard  to  communica- 
bility,  there  is  in  fact  not  any  difference  of  kind,  but 
only  of  degree.  In  every  case  the  communication 
must  be  made  indirectly,  and  through  the  medium 
of  our  outsides.  What  is  true  is  that,  with  certain 
elements,  the  ways  of  expression  may  be  shorter 
and  less  mistakeable  ;  and  again  the  conditions, 
which  secure  a  community  of  perception,  are,  with 
certain  elements,  more  constant  and  more  subject  to 
our  control.  So  much  seems  clear,  but  it  is  not 
true  that  our  physical  experiences  have  unity,  in 
any  sense  which  is  inapplicable  to  the  worlds  we 
call  internal.  Nor  again,  even  in  practice,  is  it 
always  more  easy  to  communicate  an  outer  than  an 
inner  experience.  In  brief,  regarded  as  an  exis- 
tence which  appears  in  a  soul,  the  whole  world  for 
each  is  peculiar  and  private  to  that  soul.  But,  if  on 
the  other  hand,  you  are  considering  identity  of  / 
content,  and,  on  that  basis,  are  transcending  such  ( 
particular  existences,  then  there  is,  at  once  in  prin- 
ciple, no  difference  between  the  inner  and  the 
outer.'  No  experience  can  lie  open  to  inspection 
from  outside ;  no  direct  guarantee  of  identity  is 
possible.       Both  our  knowledge  of  sameness,  and 

'   It  is  of  course  true  that  outer  experience,  to  be  properly 
outer,  must  already  have  passed  beyond  the  stage  of  mere  feeling. 


and  that,  what  is  called  inner  experience,  need  not  have  done  so. 
But  this  is,  only  in  part,  relevant  to  the  issue. 


IIODY    AND    SOUL. 


347 


•our  way   of   communication,  are    indirect    and    in-  / 
ferential.     They  must  make   the  circuit,  and  must  ( 
use  the  symbol,  of  bodily  change.      If  a  common!  \ 
ruler  of  souls  could  give  to  any  one  a  message  from 
the  inside,  such  a  message  could  never  be  handed 
•on  but  by  alterations  of  bodies.     That  real  identity 
of  ideal  content,  by  which    all  souls  live  and  move, 
cannot  work  in   common  save   by  the  path  of  ex-j 
ternal  appearance.  4- 


And,  with  this,  we  are  led  to  the  question  of  the 
identity  between  souls.  We  have  just  seen  that 
immediate  experiences  are  separate,  and  there  is 
probably  no  one  who  would  desire  to  advocate 
a  contrary  opinion.  But  there  are  those,  I  presume, 
who  will  deny  the  possibility  of  two  souls  being,  in 
any  respect,  really  the  same.  And  we  must  en- 
deavour very  briefly  to  c!ear  our  ideas  on  this 
matter. 

It  would  be,  of  course,  absurd  to  argue  that  two 
persons  are  not  two  but  only  one,  or  that,  in  general, 
differences  are  not  different,  but  simply  the  same ; 
and  any  such  contention  would  be,  doubtless,  a 
wilful  paradox.  But  the  principle  of  what  we  may 
call  the  Identity  of  Indiscernibles,  has  quite  another 
meaning.  It  implies  that  sameness  can  exist  to- 
gether with  difference,  or  that  what  is  the  same  is 
still  the  same,  however  much  in  other  ways  it  differs. 
I  shall  soon  attempt  to  define  this  principle  more 
clearly,  but  what  1  would  insist  on,  first,  is  that  to 
deny  it  is  to  affront  common  sense.  It  is,  in  fact,  to 
use  words  which  could  have  no  meaning.  For  every 
process  of  psychical  Association  is  based  on  this 
ground ;  and,  to  come  to  what  is  plainer,  every 
movement  of  our  intellect  rests  wholly  upon  it.  If 
you  will  not  assume  that  identity  holds  throughout 
different  contexts,  you  cannot  advance  one  single 
step  in  apprehending  the  world.  There  will  be 
neither  change  nor  endurance,  and  still  less,  motion 


348 


REALITY. 


through  space  of  an  identical  body  ;  there  will  neither 
be  selves  nor  things,  nor.  in  brief,  any  intelligible 
fact,  unless  on  the  assumption  that  sameness  in 
differents  is  real.  Apart  from  this  main  principle 
of  construction,  we  should  be  confined  to  the  feeling 
of  a  single  moment. 

And  to  appeal  to  Similarity  or  Resemblance  would 
be  a  futile  attempt  to  escape  in  the  darkness.  For 
Similarity  itself,  when  we  view  it  in  the  daylight,  is 
nothing  in  the  world  but  more  or  less  unspecified 
sameness.  I  will  not  dwell  here  on  a  point,  which 
elsewhere  I  have  possibly  pursued  ad  nauseam} 
No  one,  perhaps,  would  ever  have  betaken  himself 
to  mere  Resemblance,  unless  he  had  sought  in  it  a 
refuge  from  the  dangers  of  Identity.  And  these 
dangers  are  the  product  of  misunderstanding. 

There  is  a  notion  that  sameness  implies  the  denial 
of  difference,  white  difference  is,  of  course,  a  palpable 
fact.  But  really  sameness,  while  in  one  respect  exclu- 
sive of  difference,  In  another  respect  most  essentially 
implies  it.  And  these  two  "  respects"  are  indivisible, 
[-even  in  idea.  There  would  be  no  meaning  in  same- 
ness, unless  it  were  the  identity  of  differences,  the 
unity  of  elements  which  it  holds  together,  but  must 
not  confound.  And  in  the  same  way  difference, 
while  it  denies,  presupposes  identity.  For  difference 
must  depend  on  a  relation,  and  a  relation  is  possible 
only   on    a  basis   of  sameness.      It  is   not  common 

•  Principles  of  Logic,  pp.  261-2.  Cp.  Ethical  Sludifs,  p.  151. 
I  do  not  understand  that  there  is  any  material  difference  on  this 
head  between  myself  and  Mr.  Bosanquet,  KnowltJgt  and  Reality, 
pp.  97-108.  I  would  add  thai  in  psychology  the  alternative, 
between  Association  by  general  resemlilaiice  and  by  (explicit) 
partial  identity,  is  a  false  one.  The  feeling  ti>at  two  things  are 
similar  need  not  imply  the  |>erception  of  the  identical  point,  but 
none  the  less  this  feeling  is  based  always  on  partial  sameness. 
For  a  confusion  on  this  head  see  Stiiinpf,  Toiipsychologie,  I., 
1 1 2-1 14.  And  now  (while  revising  these  words  for  the  press) 
I  regret  to  have  to  add  to  Stumpf's  name  iliai  of  Professor  James. 
I  have  examined  the  above  confusion,  more  in  detail,  in  Mind, 
No.  5,  N.S.     For  Professor  James'  reply,  see  No.  6. 


BODY    AND    SOUL. 


349 


sense  that  has  any  desire  to  reject  such  truths,  and 
blintlly  to  stand  upon  difference  to  the  exclusion  of 
identity.  In  ordinary  science  no  one  would  question 
the  reality  of  motion,  because  it  makes  one  thing  the 
same  throughout  diverse  times  and  spaces.  That 
things  to  be  the  same  must  always  be  different,  and 
to  be  different  must  be,  therefore,  the  same — this  is 
not  a  paradox,  until  it  is  paradoxically  stated.  It 
does  not  seem  absurd,  unless,  wrongly,  it  is  taken  to 
imply  that  difference  and  sameness  themselves  are 
actually  not  different.'  And,  apart  from  such  mis- 
understanding, the  ground  and  reason  of  the 
antagonism  to  identity  is  furnished  merely  by  one- 
sided and  uncritical  metaphysics. 

This  mistaken  opposition  is  based  upon  a  truth,  a 
truth  that  has  been  misapprehended  and  perverted 
into  error.  What  has  been  perceived,  or  dimly  felt, 
is  in  fact  a  principle  that,  throughout  this  work,  has 
so  often  come  before  us.  The  Real  in  the  end  is 
self-subsistent,  and  contained  wholly  in  itself ;  and 
its  being  is  therefore  not  relative,  nor  does  it  admit 
a  division  of  content  from  existence.  In  short  relat- 
ivity and  self- transcendence,  or,  as  we  may  call  it, 
ideality,  cannot  as  such  be  the  character  of  ultimate 
Reality.  And,  so  far  as  this  goes,  we  are  at  one 
with  the  objectors  to  identity.  But  the  question 
really  is  about  the  conclusion  which  follows  from  this 
premise.  Ow  conclusion  is  that  finite  existence 
must,  in  the  end,  not  be  real ;  it  is  an  appearance 
which,  as  such,  is  transformed  in  the  Absolute.  But 
such  a  result  obviously  does  not  imply  that,  within 
the  world  of  phenomena,  identity  is  unreal.  And 
hence  the  conclusion,  which  more  or  less  explicitly 
is  drawn  by  our  opponents,  differs  widely  from  ours. 
From  the  self-subsistent  nature  of  the  Real  they  have 

'  So  long  as  we  .ivoid  this  mistake,  we  may,  and  even  must, 
affirm  that  things  are  different,  so  far  as  they  are  the  same,  and 
the  s.ime,  so  far  as  they  are  different.  To  get  difference,  or 
sameness,  bare  would  be  to  destroy  its  character. 


350 


REALITY. 


inferred  the  reality  of  diverse  existences,  beings  in 
any  case  several  and  finite,  and  without  community 
of  essence.'  But  this  conclusion,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  wholly  untenable.  For  plurality  and  separateness 
themselves  exist  only  by  means  of  relations  (Chapter 
iii.).  To  be  different  from  another  is  to  have 
already  transcended  one's  own  being;  and  all  finite 
existence  is  thus  incurably  relative  and  ideal.  Its 
quality  falls,  more  or  less,  outside  its  particular 
"  thatness  "  ;  and,  whether  as  the  same  or  again  as 
diverse,  it  is  equally  made  what  it  is  by  community 
with  others.  Finite  elements  are  joined  by  what 
divides,  and  are  divided  by  what  joins  them,  and 
their  division  and  their  junction  alike  are  ideal. 
But,  if  so,  and  unless  some  answer  is  found  to  this 
contention,  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  identity  is  a 
fact.*  It  is  not  real  ultimately,  we  are  agreed,  but 
then  facts  themselves  are  not  ultimate,  and  the  ques- 
tion is  confined  to  the  realm  of  phenomenal  existence. 
For  difference  itself  is  but  phenomenal,  and  is  itself 
assuredly  not  ultimate.  And  we  may  end,  I  think, 
with  this  reply.  Show  us  (we  may  urge)  a  region 
of  facts  which  are  neither  different  nor  yet  the  same  ;. 
show  us  how  quality  without  relation,  or  how  mere 
being,  can  differentiate  ;  point  out  how  difference  is- 
to  keep  any  meaning,  as  soon  as  sameness  is  wholly 
banished  ;  tell  us  the  way  in  which  sameness  and 
difference  can  exist,  if  they  may  not  be  ideal  ;  ex- 
plain how,  if  identity  is  not  real,  the  world  of  experi- 
ence in  any  part  holds  together — at  least  attempt 
this,  or  else  admit  that  identity  is  ideal  and  is,  at 
the  same  time,  a    fact,  and  that  your  objection,   in 


'  The  Englisli  writers,  whu  have  objected  to  identity,  have  left 
their  (jrinciple  of  atomism  and  their  principle  of  relativity  simply 
standing  side  by  side.  Not  one  has  (so  far  as  I  know)  made  the 
smallest  attempt  seriously  to  explain  the  [losition  given  to  relations. 
Cp.  Principles  of  Logic,  p.  96. 

*  Fact  in  the  sense  of  unseparated  adjective  of  fact.  See 
above,  p.  317. 


I 


4ju.^M^  Ji^ 


BODY    AND    SOUL.  35  t 

•  /^short,  had    no   basis  but  confusion  and   traditional 
>^NlJ  prejudice. 

But  the  principle  that  sameness  is  real  and  is  not 
V,  destroyed  by  differences,  demands,  as  we  have  seen, 
v\ome  explanation.     It  would  be  absurd,  for  instance, 
to  suppose  that  two  souls  really  are  but  one  soul, 
since    identity    always    implies   and    depends    upon 
difference ;    and   we   may   now  treat  this    point   a^ 
sufficiently  discussed.     Sameness  is   real  amid  dif- 
ferences ;    but    we    must    neither    deny    that    these 
^  differences,  in  one  sense,  affect  it,  nor  may  we  assert 
>^y  that  sameness  is  always  a   working  connection.     I 
y      will  take  these  points  in  their  order. 

We  may  say  that  what  is  once  true  remains  true 
always,  or  that  what  is  the  same  in  any  one  context, 
is  still  the  same  in  any  other  context.  But,  '\t\ 
affirming  this,  we  must  be  on  our  gi^.ard  against  a 
serious  mistake.  For  a  differencfi  of  conditions, 
it  is  obvious,  will  make  a  difference  to  sameness, 
and  it  is  certain  that  contexts  can  modify  their 
identical  element.  If,  that  is,  rushing  to  the  oppo- 
site extreme,  you  go  on  to  immerse  wholly  your 
truths  in  their  conditions,  if  you  refuse  in  any  respect 
to  abstract  from  this  total  diversity,  then  the  principle 
of  identity  becomes  inapplicable.  You  then  would 
not  have  the  same  thinsj  under  different  circumstances, 
because  you  would  have  declined  to  see  anything 
whatever  but  difference.  But,  if  we  avoid  these 
errors  on  each  side,  the  principle  soon  becomes 
clear.  Identity  obviously  by  its  essence  must  be 
more  or  less  abstract  ;  and,  when  we  predicate  it, 
we  are  disregarding  other  sides  of  the  whole.  We 
are  asserting  that,  notwithstanding  other  aspects, 
this  one  aspect  of  sameness  persists  and  is  real.  We 
do  not  say  how  far  it  e.xtends,  or  what  proportion 
it  bears  to  the  accompanying  diversity  ;  but  same- 
ness, so  far  as  it  goes,  is  actually  and  genuinely  the 
same.  Given  a  fresh  instance  of  a  law,  and  the  law 
still  holds  good,  though  in  the  whole  result  this  one. 


352 


REALITY. 


factor  may  seem  overborne.     The  other  conditions 
here  have  joined  to  modify  the  general  consequence, 
but  the  law  itself  has  worked  fully,  and  has  main- 
tained its  selfsame  character.     And,  given  two  indi- 
viduals with  any  part  of  their  content   indiscernible, 
then,  while  that  is  so,  we  are  bound,  so  far,  to  con- 
sider them  the  same.     However  much  their  diversity 
may    preponderate,   however  different  may   be   the 
whole  effect  of  each  separate  compound,  yet,  for  all 
that,  what  is  the  same  in  them  is  one  and  identical. 
And  our  principle,  thus  understood,  is  surely  irrefrag- 
able, and  wears  the  air,  perhaps,  more  of  triviality 
than  of  paradox.      Its  results  indeed  often  would  be 
trivial,  most  empty  and   frivolous.      Its  significance 
varies  with  varying  conditions.     To  know  that  two 
souls  have  an  element  of  their  contents  in  common, 
may  thus  be  quite  unimportant.     Such   knowledge 
may,  again,  assure  us  of  the  very  gravest  and  most 
fundamental   truths.     But  of  all  this  the   principle 
itself,  being  abstract,  tells  us  nothing. 
And  as  to  any  working  connection 
is  silent.     Whether  an  identical  point 
affects  them  otherwise,  so  as  to  cause  other  changes 
to  happen,  we  are  unable  to  learn  from  it.     For  how 
a  thing  works  must  depend  on   its  special  relations, 
while  the  principle,  as  we   have  seen,   remains  per- 
fectly general.     Two  souls,  for  example,  which  live 
together,  may  by  their  identity  be  drawn  into  active 
community.      If  the  same  were   sundered    in  time, 
this,  for  our  knowledge,  would  be  impossible.      But, 
in    the    latter  case,   the   identity  exists  actually  as 
much  as  it  exists   in   the   former.     The  amount  of 
sameness,  and  the  kind  of  sameness,  and  what  the 
sameness  will  bring  forth — these  points  all   fall  out- 
side of  our  abstract  principle.      But  if  any  one  bases 
an  objection  on   this  ground,   he   would  seem  to  be 
arguing  in  effect  that,  because,  in  fact,  diverse  iden- 
tities exist,  therefore  identity,  as  a  fact,  has  no  actual 
existence.     And  such  a  position  seems  irrational. 


our  principle 
in   two  things 


BODY    AND   SOUL. 


353 


Our  result,  so  far,  is  that  tlie  sameness  between 
souls  is  a  fact.  The  identity  of  their  content  is  just 
as  real  as  is  their  separate  CKistence.  But  this 
identity,  on  the  other  hand,  need  not  imply  a 
further  relation  between  them.  It  need  not,  so  far 
as  we  can  see,  act  in  any  way  ;  and  its  action,  where  ! 
it  acts,  appears  to  be  always  indirect.  Souls  seem 
to  influence  one  another  only  by  means  of  their  ( 
bodies. 


But  this  limited   view  of  identity,  as  a  workingl 
force,  must  be  modified  when  we  consider  the  indi-7 
vidual  soul.      In  the  course  of  its  internal   historyl 
we  must  admit  that  the  sameness  of  its  states  is  an\ 
actual  mover.      In  other  words  the  mechanical  in-f 
terpretation,  if  throu^^hout  appUcable  to  Nature,  must 
in  dealing  with  souls  be  in  part  given  up,     And  I 
will  end  the  chapter  by  pointing  out  this  important 
distinction. 

I  mean  by  Nature  here  the  physical  world,  con- 
sidered merely  as  physical  and  in  abstraction  from 
soul  (Chapter  xxii.).  And  in  Nature  sameness  and 
difference  may  be  said  everywhere  to  exist,  but 
never  anywhere  to  work  This  would,  at  least, 
appear  to  be  the  ideal  of  natural  science,  however 
incompletely  that  ideal  has  been  carried  into  practice. 
No  element,  according  to  this  principle,  can  be  any- 
thing to  any  other,  merely  because  it  is  the  same,  or 
because  it  is  different.  For  these  are  but  internal 
characters,  while  that  which  works  is  in  every  case 
an  outward  relation.'  But  then,  if  so,  sameness  and 
ilifference    may   appear    at    first    sight    to    have    no 

'  I  have  not  thought  it  necessary  in  the  text  to  say  anything  on 
the  view  which  finds  a  solution  of  all  puzzles  in  im|>act.  For  why, 
in  the  first  place,  the  working  of  impact  should  be  self-evident, 
seems,  except  by  the  influence  of  mere  habit,  not  easy  to  perceive. 
And,  in  the  second  place,  it  is  sheer  thoughtlessness  if  we  imagine 
that  by  impact  we  get  rid  of  the  universal.  Complete  relativity, 
and  an  ideal  unity  which  transcends  the  particulars,  are  just  as 
essential  to  impact  as  to  everything  else. 

A.  R.  A  A 


354 


REALITY. 


meaning  at  all.     They  may  look  like  idle  ornaments 
of  which  science,  if  consistent,    should  strip   itself. 
Such  a  conclusion,   however,   would  be  premature, 
since,  if  these  two  characters  are  removed,  science 
bodily  disappears.      It  would  be  impossible  without 
them  ever  to  ask  Why,  or  any  longer  to  say  Because. 
And  the  function  of  sameness  and  difference,  if  we 
consider  it,  is  obvious.      For  the  external   relations, 
which  work,  are  summed  up  in  the  laws  ;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  internal  characters  of  the  separate 
elements  serve  to  connect  them  with  these  universal 
strings  or   hinges.       And    thus,   while    inoperative, 
sameness  and  difference  are  still  effective  indirectly, 
and   in  fact  are  indispensable.     This  would  appear 
to  be  the  essence  of  the  mechanical  view.     But  I  am 
unable  to  state  how  far  at  present,  through  the  higher 
regions  of  Nature,  it  has  been  in  practice  applied  ; 
and  again  I  do  not  know  how  properly  to  interpret, 
for  example,  the  (apparent)  effect  of  identity  in  the 
case  of  continued  motion  through  space.     To  speak 
generally,  the  mechanical  view  is   in  principle  non- 
sense, because  the  position  of  the  laws  is  quite  incon- 
sistent and   unintelligible.     This  is  indeed  a  defect 
which  belongs  necessarily  to  every  special  science 
(Chapter  xi.),  but  in  the  sphere  of  Nature  it  reaches 
its  lowest  extreme.     The  identity  of  physical  ele- 
ments  may  thus  be  said  to  fall  outside  their  own 
being,  their  universality  seems  driven   into  banish- 
ment and  forced  to  reside  solely  in  laws.     And,  since 
these  laws  on  the  one  hand  are  noi  physical,  and 
since   on    the    other    hand    they  seem    essential    to 
Nature,  the  essence  of  Nature  seems,  therefore,  made 
alien  to  itself,  and   to  be  on  either  side  unnaturally 
sundered.      However,  compulsion  from  outside  is  the 
one  working  principle  which  is  taken  to  hold  in  the 
physical  world.     And,  at  least  if  we  are  true  to  our 
ideal,  neither  identity  nor  difference  can  act  in  Nature. 

When  we  come  to  psychology  this  is  altered.      I  \ 
do  not  mean  that  there  the  mechanical  view  ceases  l 


BODY    AND   SOUL.  355 

wholly,  nor  do  I  mean  that,  where  it  is  superseded, 
as  in  the  working  of  pleasure  and  pain,  that  which 
operates  must  be  ideal.'  But,  to  a  greater  or  less 
extent,  all  psychology,  in  its  practice,  is  compelled  to 
admit  the  working  power  of  Identity.  A  psycholo- 
gist may  employ  this  force  unwillingly,  or  may  deny 
that  he  employs  it ;  but  without  it  he  would  be  quite 
unable  to  make  his  way  through  the  subject.  I  do 
not  propose  here  to  touch  upon  Coalescence  or 
Blending,  a  principle  much  neglected  by  English 
psychologists.  I  will  come  at  once  to  Redintegra- 
tion, or  what  is  more  familiar  to  us  as  Association 
by  Contiguity.  Here  we  are  forced  to  affirm  that 
what  happens  now  in  the  soul  happens  because  of 
something  else  which  took  place  there  before.  And 
it  happens,  further,  because  of  a  point  of  identity  con- 
necting the  present  with  the  past.*  That  is  to  say, 
the  past  conjunction  in  the  soul  has  become  a  law  of 
its  being.  It  actually  exists  there  again  because  it 
happened  there  once,  and  because,  in  the  present 
and  in  the  past,  an  element  of  content  is  identical. 
And  thus  in  the  soul  we  can  have  habits,  while 
habits  that  are  but  physical  exist,  perhaps,  only 
through  a  doubtful  metaphor.  Where  present  and 
past  functions  have  not  an  inner  basis  of  identity, 
the  word  habit,  if  used,  has  no  longer  its  meaning.' 
Hence  we  may  say  that  to  a  large  extent  the  soul  is 
itself  its  own  laws,  consists,  itself,  in  the  identity  be- 
tween its  present  and  its  past,  and  (unlike  Nature) 
has  its  own  ideal  essence  not  quite  external  to  itself. 
This  seems,  at  all  events,  the  view  which,  however 
erroneous,  must  be  employed  by  every  working 
psychologist. 

'  On  this  point,  and  on  what  follows,  compare  Mind,  xii.,  pp. 
360  and  foil. 

*  I  have  shown,  in  my  Principles  of  Logic,  that  Contiguity  can- 
not be  explamed  by  mere  Similarity.  See  the  chapter  there  on 
the  Association  of  Ideas. 

*  The  question  seems  to  turn  on  the  amount  of  inward  identity 
which  we  are  prepared  to  attribute  to  a  physical  thing. 


356 


REALITY. 


But  I  must  hasten  to  add  that  this  view  remains 
gravely  imperfect.  It  is  in  the  end  impossible  to 
maintain  that  anything  is  because  it  /las  been.  And 
with  regard  to  the  soul,  such  an  objection  can  be 
pressed  from  two  sides.  Suppose,  in  the  first  place, 
that  another  body  like  my  own  were  manufactured, 
can  I  deny  that  with  this  body  would  go  everything 
that  I  call  my  self  ?  So  long  as  the  soul  is  not 
placed  in  the  position  of  an  idle  appendage,  I  have 
already,  in  principle,  accepted  this  result.  I  think 
that  in  such  a  case  there  would  be  the  same  associa- 
tions and  of  course  the  same  memory.  But  we  could 
no  longer  repeat  here  that  the  soul  is,  because  it 
has  been.  We  should  be  compelled  rather  to  assert 
that  (in  a  sense)  the  soul  has  been,  because  it  now 
is.  This  imaginary  case  has  led  us  back,  in  fact,  to 
that  problem  of  "  dispositions,"  which  we  found  be- 
fore was  insoluble.  Its  solution  (so  far  as  we  could 
perceive)  would  dissolve  each  of  the  constructions 
called  body  and  soul. 

And,  in  the  second  place,  regarded  from  the  in- 
side, the  psychological  view  of  identity  is  no  less  a 
compromise.  We  may  perhaps  apprehend  this  by 
considering  the  double  aspect  of  Memor)'.  We  re- 
member, on  the  one  hand,  because  of  prior  events  in 
our  existence.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  memory  is 
most  obviously  a  construction  from  the  present,  and 
it  depends  absolutely  upon  that  which  at  the  moment 
we  are.  And  this  latter  movement,  when  developed, 
carries  us  wholly  outside  the  psychological  view,  and 
altogether  beyond  memory.  For  the  main  object 
of  thought  may  be  called  the  attempt  to  get  rid  of 
mere  conjunctions  in  the  soul.  A  true  connection, 
in  the  end,  we  see  cannot  be  true,  because  once  upon 
a  time  its  elements  happened  together.  Mere  as- 
sociations, themselves  always  universal  from  the 
first,'   are    hence    by  thought   deliberately  purified. 

'   I  have  endeavoured  to  prove  this  point  in  Principles  of  Logic, 
pp.  36  and  foil. ;  284  and  foil. ;  cp.  460-1.     I  venture  to  tliink  that 


BODY    AND    SOUL. 


357 


Starting  from  mere  "  facts  " — from  those  relations 
which  are  perceived  in  confused  union  with  an 
irrelevant  context — thought  endeavours  to  transform 
them.  Its  advance  would  end  in  an  ideal  world 
where  nothing  stands  by  itself,  where,  in  other 
words,  nothing  is  forced  to  stand  in  relation  with  what 
is  foreign,  but  where,  on  the  contrary,  truth  consists 
in  an  absolute  relativity.  Every  clement  here  would 
be  because  of  something  other  which  supports  it,  in 
which  other,  and  in  the  whole,  it  finds  its  own  iden- 
tity. I  certainly  admit  that  this  ideal  can  not  be  fully 
realized  (Chapter  XV.)  ;  but  it  furnishes  the  test  by 
which  we  must  judge  whatever  offers  itself  as  truth. 
And,  measured  by  this  test,  the  psychological  view 
is  condemned. 

The  entire  phenomenal  world,  as  a  connected 
series,  and,  in  this  world,  the  two  constructions  known 
as  body  and  soul,  are,  all  alike,  imperfect  ways  of 
regarding  Reality.  And  these  ways  at  every  point 
have  proved  unstable.  They  are  arbitrary  fixtures 
which  tend  throughout  to  transcend  their  limits,  the 
limits  which,  for  the  sake  of  practice,  we  are  forced 
to  impose.  And  the  result  is  everywhere  inconsist-j 
ency.  We  found  that  body,  attempting  to  work 
without  identity,  became  unintelligible.  And  we  sawif 
that  the  soul,  admitting  identity  as  a  function  in  its 
life,  ended  also  in  mere  compromise.  These  things  / 
are  both  appearances,  and  both  are  untrue  ;  but  still 
untruth  has  got  degrees.  And,  compared  with  the/ 
physical  world,  the  soul  is,  by  far,  less  unreal.  It 
shows  to  a  larger  extent  that  self-dependence  in| 
which  Reality  consists. 

But  the  discussion  of  degrees  in  Reality  will  en- 
gage us  hereafter.  We  may  now  briefly  recall  the 
main  results  of  this  chapter.  We  have  seen  that 
body  and  soul  are  phenomenal  constructions.     They 

psychology  is  suiTering  seriously  from  w.int  of  clearness  on  this 
head. 


358 


REALITY. 


are  each  inconsistent  abstractions,  held  apart  for  the  ' 
sake  of  theoretical  convenience.  And  the  superior 
reality  of  the  body  we  found  was  a  superstition. 
Passing  thence  to  the  relation,  which  seems  to  couple 
these  two  makeshifts,  we  endeavoured  to  define  it.* 
We  rejected  both  the  idea  of  mere  concomitance, 
and  of  the  one-sided  dependence  of  the  soul ;  and 
we  urged  that  an  adjective,  whicli  makes  no  differ- 
ence to  anything,  is  nonsense.  We  then  discussed 
briefly  the  possibilities  of  bare  soul  and  bare  body, 
and  we  went  from  this  to  the  relations  which  actually 
e.\ist  between  souls.  We  concluded  that  souls  affect 
each  other,  in  fact,  only  through  their  bodies,  but  we 
insisted  that,  none  the  less,  ideal  identity  betweea 
souls  is  a  genuine  fact.  We  found,  last  of  all,  that^ 
in  the  psychical  life  of  the  individual,  we  had  to  re- 
cognise the  active  working  of  sameness.  And  we 
ended  this  chapter  with  the  reflection  which  through- 
out has  been  near  us.  We  have  here  been  handling 
problems,  the  complete  solution  of  which  would  in- 
volve the  destruction  of  both  body  and  soul.  We 
have  found  ourselves  naturally  carried  forward  to- 
the  consideration  of  that  which  is  beyond  them. 

'  I  would  append  a  few  words  to  explain  further  ray  attitude 
towards  the  view  vpliicii  takes  the  soul  as  the  ideality  of  its  body. 
If  that  view  made  soul  and  body  together  an  ultimate  reality,  I 
should  reject  it  on  this  ground.  Otherwise  cert.ainly  I  hold  that 
individuality  is  ideal,  and  that  soul  in  general  realizes  individuality 
at  a  stage  beyond  body.  But  I  hesitate  to  assert  that  the  par- 
ticular soul  and  body  correspond,  so  that  the  first  is  throughout 
the  fulfilment  and  inner  reality  of  the  second.  And  I  doubt  our 
right  generally  to  take  soul  and  body  together  as  always  making 
or  belonging  to  but  one  finite  individual.  Further  I  cannot  admit 
that  the  connection  of  sou!  and  body  is  really  either  intelligible 
or  explicable.  My  attitude  towards  this  whole  doctrine  is  thus- 
in  the  main  sympathetically  neutral. 


DEGREES  OF  TRUTH  AND  REALITY. 

In  our  last  chapter  we  reached  the  question  of 
degrees  in  Truth  and  Reality,  and  we  must  now 
endeavour  to  make  clear  what  is  contained  in  that 
idea.'  An  attempt  to  do  this,  thoroughly  and  in 
tietail,  would  carry  us  too  far.  To  show  how  the 
world,  physical  and  spiritual,  realizes  by  various 
stages  and  degrees  the  one  absolute  principle,  would 
involve  d  system  of  metaphysics.  And  such  a  sys- 
tem I  am  not  undertaking  to  construct.  I  am  en- 
deavouring merely  to  get  a  sound  general  view  of  i 
ReaUty,  and  to  defend  it  against  a  number  of  diffi- 
culties and  objections.  But,  for  this,  it  is  essential 
to  explain  and  to  justify  the  predicates  of  higher  I 
and  lower.  While  dealing  with  this  point,  I  shall 
develope  further  the  position  which  we  have  already 
assigned  to  Thought  (Chapters  xv.  and  xvi.). 

The  Absolute,  considered  as  such,  has  of  course  i 
no  degrees  ;  for  it  is  perfect,  and  there  can  be  no  \ 
more  or   less    in   perfection  (Chapter   xx.).      Such  • 
predicates  belong   to,  and   have  a  meaning  only  in 
the   world  of  appearance.     We  may  be   reminded, 
indeed,  that  the  same  absoluteness  seems  also  pos- 
sessed by  existence  in  time.     For  a  thing  either  may  ( 
have  a  place  there,  or  may  have  none,  but  it  cannot 
inhabit  any  interval  between  presence  and  absence. 
This  view  would  assume  that  existence   in  time  is 
Reality  ;   and   in   practice,   and  for  some   purposes^ 

'  I  may  mention  that  in  this  chapter  I  am,  perhaps  even  more 
than  elsewhere,  indebted  to  HegeL 


36o 


REALITY. 


that  is  admissible.  But,  besides  being  false,  the 
assumption  tends  naturally  to  pass  beyond  itself. 
For,  if  a  thing  may  not  exist  less  or  more,  it  must 
certainly  more  or  less  occupy  existence.  It  may 
usurp  ground  by  its  direct  presence,  but  again, 
further,  by  its  influence  and  relative  importance. 
Thus  we  should  find  it  difficult,  in  the  end,  to  say 
exactly  what  we  understand  by  "having  "  existence. 
We  should  even  find  a  paradox  in  the  assertion,  that 
everything  alike  has  existence  to  precisely  the  same 
degree. 

But  here,  in  metaphysics,  we  have  long  ago 
passed  beyond  this  one-sided  point  of  view.  On 
one  hand  the  series  of  temporal  facts  has  been  per- 
ceived to  consist  in  ideal  construction.  It  is  ideal, 
not  indeed  wholly  (Chapter  xxiii.),  but  still  essen- 
tially. And  such  a  series  is  but  appearance  ;  it  is 
not  absolute,  but  relative  :  and,  like  all  other  appear- 
ance, it  admits  the  distinction  of  more  and  less.  On 
the  other  hand,  we  have  seen  that  truth,  which  again 
itself  is  appearance,  both  unconsciously  and  deliber- 
ately diverges  from  this  rude  essay.  And,  without 
considering  further  the  exploded  claim  set  up  by 
temporal  fact,  we  may  deal  generally  with  the  ques- 
tion of  degrees  in  reality  and  truth. 

We  have  already  perceived  the  main  nature  ofi 
the  process  of  thinking.'     Thought  essentially  con- I 
sists    in    the  separation    of   the    "  what "   from   the/ 
"that."     It  may  be  said  to  accept  this  dissolution 
as    its  effective  principle.      Thus    it  renounces  all! 
attempt  to  make  fact,  and  it  confines  itself  to  con-/ 
tent.      But  by   embracing  this  separation,   and   bv 
urging  this  independent  development  to  its  extreme, 
thought  indirectly  endeavours  to  restore  the  broken' 
whole.      It  seeks  to  find  an  arrangement  of  ideas, 
self-consistent  and  complete ;  and  by  this  predicate 


'  Chapters  xv.  and  xvi.     Cp.  Mind,  No.  47. 


DEGREES    OF   TRUTH    AND    REALITY, 


361 


it  has  to  qualify  and  make  good  the  Reality.  And, 
as  we  have  seen,  its  attempt  would  in  the  end  be  ; 
suicidal.  Truth  should  mean  what  it  stands  for,  and 
should  stancl  for  what  it  means  ;  but  these  two 
aspects  in  the  end  prove  incompatible.  There  is  • 
still  a  difference,  unreinoved,  between  the  subject 
and  the  predicate,  a  difference  which,  while  it  per- 
sists, shows  a  failure  in  thought,  but  which,  if  re- 
moved, would  wholly  destroy  the  special  essence  of 
thinking. 

We  may  put  this  otherwise  by  laying  down  that 
any  categorical  judgment  must  be  false.     The  sub- 
ject and  the  predicate,  in  the  end.  cannot  either  be 
the  other.     If  however   we  stop  short  of  this  goal,  ' 
our  judgment  has  failed  to  reach  truth  ;  while,  if  we  \ 
attained  it,  the  terms  and  their  relation  would  have   \ 
ceased.     And  hence  all  our  judgments,  to  be  true, 
must  become  conditional.       The  predicate,  that  is, 
does  not  hold  unless  by  the  help  of  something  else. 
And  this  "  something  else  "  cannot  be  stated,  so  as  1 
to  fall  inside  even  a  new  and  conditional  predicate,*   > 

It  is  however  better,  I  am  now  persuaded,  not  to 
say  that  every  judgment  is  hypothetical. ■  The 
word,  it  is  clear,  may  introduce  irrelevant  ideas. 
Judgments  are  conditional  in  this  sense,  that  what 
they  affirm  is  incomplete.  It  cannot  be  attributed 
to  Reality,  as  such,  and  before  its  necessary  comple- 
ment is  added.  And,  in  addition,  this  complement 
in  the  end  remains  unknown.  But,  while  it  remains 
unknown,  we  obviously  cannot  tell  how,  if  present, 
it  would  act  upon  and  alter  our  predicate.  For  to 
suppose  that  its  presence  would  make  no  difference 
is  plainly  absurd,  while  the  precise   nature  of  the 


'  I  may,  perhaps,  refer  here  to  ray  Principles  of  Logic.  Even 
metaphysical  statements  about  the  Absolute,  I  would  add,  are  not 
strictly  categorical.     See  below  Chapter  xxvii. 

*  This  term  often  implies  the  reality  of  temporal  existence,  and 
is  also,  apart  from  that,  objectionable.  See  Mr.  Bosanquet's 
admirable  Logic,  I.,  Chapter  vi. 


362 


REALITY. 


difference  falls  outside  oiir  knowledge.  But,  if  so, 
this  unknown  modification  of  our  predicate  may,  in 
various  degrees,  destroy  its  special  character.  The 
content  in  fact  might  so  be  altered,  be  so  redistrib- 
uted and  blended,  as  utterly  to  be  transformed. 
And,  in  brief,  the  predicate  may,  taken  as  such,  be 
more  or  less  completely  untrue.  Thus  we  really 
always  have  asserted  subject  to,  and  at  the  mercy 
of.  the  unknown.'  And  hence  our  judgment,  always 
but  to  a  varying  extent,  must  in  the  end  be  called 
conditional. 

But  with  this  we  have  arrived  at  the  meeting- 
ground  of  error  and  truth.  There  will  be  no  truth 
which  is  entirely  true,  just  as  there  will  be  no  eri'or 
which  is  totally  false.  With  all  alike,  if  taken 
strictly,  it  will  be  a  question  of  amount,  and  will  be 
a  matter  of  more  or  less.  Our  thoughts  certainly, 
for  some  purposes,  may  be  taken  as  wholly  false,  or 
again  as  quite  accurate  ;  but  truth  and  error, 
measured  by  the  Absolute,  must  each  be  subject 
v^  always  to  degree.  Our  judgments,  in  a  word,  can 
'heve^r  reach  as  far  as  perfect  truth,  and  must  be 
content  merely  to  enjoy  more  or  less  of  Validity.  I 
'tlo  not  simply  mean  by  this  term  that,  for  working 
purposes,  our  judgments  are  admissible  and  will 
pass.  I  mean  that  less  or  more  they  actually  possess 
the  character  and  type  of  absolute  truth  and  reality. 
They  can  take  the  place  of  the  Real  to  various  ex- 
tents, because  containing  in  themselves  less  or  more 
of  its  nature.     They  are   its  representatives,  worse 

'  Hence  in  the  end  we  must  be  held  to  tiave  asserted  the  un- 
known. It  is  however  better  tiot  to  call  this  the  predication  of  an 
unknown  quality  {Principles  of  Logic,  p.  87),  since  "quality" 
either  adds  nothing,  or  else  adds  what  is  false.  The  doctrine  of 
the  text  seems  seriously  to  affect  the  reciprocity  of  ground  and 
consequence,  of  cause  and  effect.  I  certainly  agree  here  that,  if 
the  judgments  are  pure,  the  relation  holds  both  ways  (Bosanquet. 
Lo^c,  I.,  pp.  261-4).  Bu'i  if 'n  t'ls  end  they  remain  impiire,  and 
must  be  qualified  always  by  an  unspecified  background,  that 
circumstance  must  be  taken  into  consideration. 


DEGREES    OF    TRUTH    AND    REALITY. 


363 


or  better,  in  proportion  as  they  present  us  with  truth 
affected  by  greater  or  less  derangement.  Our 
judgments  hold  good,  in  short,  just  so  far  as  they 
agree  with,  and  do  not  diverge  from,  the  real  stand- 
ard. We  may  put  it  otherwise  by  saying  that  truths 
are  true,  according  as  it  would  take  less  or  more  to 
convert  them  into  reality. 

We  have  perceived,  so  far,  that  truth  is  relative»v 
and  always  imperfect.  We  have  ne.xt  to  see  that,  1 
though  failing  of  perfection,  ail  thought  is  to  some 
degree  true.  On  the  one  hand  it  falls  short  of,  and, 
on  the  other  hand  at  the  same  time,  it  realizes  the 
standard.  But  we  must  begin  by  enquiring  what 
this  standard  is. 

Perfection  of  truth  and  of  reality  has  in  the  end^ 
the  same  character.  It  consists  in  positive,  self-sub- 
sisting individuality  ;  and  I  have  endeavoured  tc 
show,  in  Chapter  .xx.,  what  individuality  means] 
Assuming  that  the  reader  has  recalled  the  niair 
points  of  that  discussion,  I  will  point  out  the  two 
ways  in  which  individuality  appears.  Truth  must 
exhibit  the  mark  of  internal  harmony,  or,  again,  the 
Triark  of  expansion  and  all-inclusivenes.s.  And  these 
two  characttristics  are  diverse  aspects  of  a  single 
principle.  That  which  contradicts  itself,  in  the  first 
place,  jars,  because  the  whole,  immanent  within  it, 
drives  its  parts  into  collision.  And  the  way  to  find 
harmony,  as  we  have  seen,  is  to  re-distribute  these 
discrepancies  in  a  wider  arrangement.  But,  in  the 
second  place,  harmony  is  incompatible  with  restric- 
tion and  finitude.  For  that,  which  is  not  all-inclus- 
ive, must  by  virtue  of  its  essence  internally  disagree  ; 
and,  if  we  reflect,  the  reason  of  this  becomes  plain. 
That  which  exists  in  a  whole  has  external  relations. 
iWhatever  it  fails  to  include  within  its  own  nature,  | 
[must  be  related  to  it  by  the  whole,  and  related  ex-  , 
lernally.  Now  these  extrinsic  relations,  on  the  one 
nand,  fall  outside  of  itself,  but,  upon  the  other  hand. 


I 


364 


REALITY. 


-i 


cannot  do  so.  For  a  relation  must  at  both  ends 
affect,  and  pass  Into,  the  being  of  its  terms.  And 
hence  the  inner  essence  of  what  Is  finite  itself  both 
is,  and  is  not,  the  relations  which  limit  it.  Its  nature 
is  hence  incurably  relative,  passing,  that  is,  beyond 
itself,  and  importing,  again,  into  its  own  core  a  mass 
of  foreign  connections.  Thus  to  be  defined  from 
without  is,  in  principle,  to  be  distracted  within. 
And,  the  smaller  the  element,  the  more  wide  is  this 
dissipation  of  its  essence — a  dissipation  too  thorough 
to  be  deep,  or  to  support  the  title  of  an  intestine 
division."  But,  on  the  contrary,  the  expansion  of 
the  element  should  increase  harmony,  for  it  should 
brinof  these  external  relations  within  the  inner  sub- 
stance.  By  growth  the  element  becomes,  more  and 
more,  a  consistent  individual,  containing  in  itself  its 
own  nature ;  and  it  forms,  more  and  more,  a  whole 
inclusive  of  discrepancies  and  reducing  them  to  sys- 
tem. The  two  aspects,  of  e.xtension  and  harmony, 
are  thus  in  principle  one,  though  (as  we  shall  see 
later)  for  our  practice  they  in  some  degree  fall  apart. 
And  we  must  be  content,  for  the  present,  to  use  them 
independently. 

Hence  to  be  more  or  less  true,  and  to  be  more  or 
less  real,  is  to  be  separated  by  an  interval,  smaller 
I  or  greater,  from  all- inclusiveness  or  self-consistency. 
Of  two  given  appearances  the  one  more  wide,  or 
more  harmonious,  is  more  real.  It  approaches 
nearer  to  a  single,  all-containing,  individuality.  To 
remedy  its  imperfections,  in  other  words,  we  should 
have  to  make  a  smaller  alteration.  The  truth  and 
the  fact,  which,  to  be  converted  into  the  Absolute, 
would  require  less  re-arrangement  and  addition,  is 
more  real  and  truer.     And  this  is  what  we  mean  by 


\ 


^t 


•  It  may  seem  a  paradox  to  speak  of  the  distraction,  say,  of  a 
material  particle.  But  try  to  state  what  that  is,  without  bringing 
into  it  what  it  is  not.  Its  distraction,  of  course,  is  not  felt.  But 
the  point  is  that  self- alienation  is  here  too  extreme  for  any  feeling, 
or  any  self,  to  exist. 


DEGREES    OK    TRUTH    AND    REALITY. 


365 


degrees  of  reality  and  truth.  To  possess  more  the 
character  of  reality,  and  to  contain  within  oneself  a 
greater  amount  of  the  real,  are  two  expressions  for 
the  same  thing. 

And  the  principle,  on  which  false  appearance  can 
be  converted  into  truth,  we  have  already  set  forth  in 
our  chapter  on  Error.  The  method  consists,  as  we 
saw,  in  supplementation  and  in  re-arrangement ;  but 
I  will  not  repeat  here  our  former  discussion.  A 
total  error  would  mean  the  attribution  of  a  content 
to  Reality,  which,  even  when  redistributed  and  dis- 
solved, could  still  not  be  assimilated.  And  no  such 
extreme  case  seems  possible.  An  error  can  be  total 
only  in  this  sense  that,  when  it  is  turned  into  truth, 
its  particular  nature  will  have  vanished,  and  its 
actual  self  be  destroyed.  But  this  we  must  allow, 
again,  to  happen  with  the  lower  kinds  of  truth. 
There  cannot  for  metaphysics  be,  in  short,  any  hard 
and  absolute  distinction  between  truths  and  false- 
hoods. With  each  assertion  the  question  is,  how 
much  will  be  left  of  that  assertion,  if  we  suppose  it 
to  have  been  converted  into  ultimate  truth  ?  Out 
of  everything,  that  makes  its  special  nature  as  the 
predication  of  this  adjective,  how  much,  if  anything, 
will  survive  ?  And  the  amount  of  survival  in  each 
case,  as  we  have  already  seen,  gives  the  degree  of 
reality  and  truth. 

But  it  may  perhaps  be  objected  that  there  are 
judgments  without  any  real  meaning,  and  that  there 
are  mere  thoughts,  which  do  not  even  pretend  to 
attribute  anything  to  Reality.  And,  with  these,  it 
will  be  urged  that  there  can  no  longer  remain  the 
least  degree  of  truth.  They  may,  hence,  be  adjec- 
tives of  the  Real,  but  are  not  judgments  about  it. 
The  discussion  of  this  objection  falls,  perhaps,  out- 
side the  main  scope  of  my  work,  but  1  should  like 
briefly  to  point  out  that  it  rests  on  a  mistake.  In 
the  first  place  every  judgment,  whether  positive  or 


I 


366 


REALITY. 


negative,  and  however  frivolous  its  character,  makes 
an  assertion  about  Reality.'  And  the  content  as- 
serted cannot,  as  we  have  seen,  be  altogether  an 
error,  though  its  ultimate  truth  may  quite  transform 
its  original  meaning.      And,   in  the   second    place, 

I  every  kind  of  thought  implies  a  judgment,  in  this 
sense  that  it  ideally  qualifies  Reality.  To  question, 
or  to  doubt,  or  to  suggest,  or  to  entertain  a  mere 
idea,  is  not  explicitly  to  judge.  So  much  is  certain 
and  obvious.  But,  when  we  enquire  further  into 
what  these  states  necessarily  imply,  our  conclusion 
must  be  otherwise.  If  we  use  judgment  for  the 
reference,  however  unconscious  and  indefinite,  of 
thought  to  reality,  then  without  exception  to  think 
must  be,  in  some  sense,  to  judge.  Thought  in  its 
earliest  stage  immediately  modifies  a  direct  sensible 
presentation  ;  and,  although,  on  one  side,  the  qualifi- 
cation becomes  conditional,  and  although  the  reality, 
on  the  other  side,  becomes  partly  non-sensuous, 
thought's  main  character  is  still  preserved.  The 
reference  to  reality  may  be,  in  various  degrees,  un- 
defined and  at  large.  The  ideal  content  may  be 
applied  subject  to  more  or  less  transformation  ;  its 
struggling  and  conditional  character  may  escape  our 
notice,  or  may  again  be  realized  with  less  or  more 
consciousness.  But  to  hold  a  thought,  so  to  speak, 
in  the  air,  without  a  relation  of  any  kind  to  the  Real, 
in  any  of  its  aspects  or  spheres,  we  should  find  in 
the  end  to  be  impossible.* 

This  statement,  I  am  aware,  may  seem  largely 
paradoxical.  The  merely  imaginary,  I  may  be  told, 
is  not  referred  to  reality.  It  may,  on  the  contrary, 
be  even  with   consciousness    held  apart.     But,   on 


'  I  may  refer  the  reader  here  to  my  Principles  of  Logic,  or, 
rather,  to  Mr.  Bosanquet's  Logic,  which  is,  in  many  points,  a 
great  advance  on  my  own  work.  I  have,  to  a  slight  extent, 
modified  my  views  on  Judgment. 

'  See  Mr.  Bosanquet's  Logic,  Introduction,  and  the  same 
author's  Knowledge  and  Reality,  pp,  148-155. 


DEGRKES   OF   TRUTH    AND 


^H         further  reflection,  we  should  find  that  our  general 

^H         account  will   hold  good.      The  imaginary  always  is 

^H         regarded  as  an  adjective  of  the  real.     But,  in  refer- 

^H  ring  it,  (a)  we  distinguish,  with   more  or  less  con- 

^H  sciuusness,  the  regions  to  which  it  is,  and  to  which 

^p         it   is  not,  applicable.     And   (A)  we  are   aware,  in 

^^  different  degrees,  of  the  amount  of  supplementation 

and  re-arrangement,  which  our  idea  would  require 

before   it    reached    truth.      These  are  two    aspects 

of  the  same  principle,  and   I  will  deal  briefly  with 

j  each. 

1(a)  With  regard  to  the  first  point  we  must  recall 
the  want  of  unity  in  the  world,  as  it  comes  within 
each  of  us.  The  universe  we  certainly  feel  is  one, 
but  that  does  not  prevent  it  from  appearing  divided, 
and  in  separate  spheres  and  regions.  And  between 
these  diverse  provinces  of  our  life  there  may  be  no 
visible  connection.  In  art,  in  morality  and  religion, 
in   trade  or    politics,  or  again  in    some  theoretical 

,  pursuit,  it  is  a  commonplace  that  the  individual 
may  have  a  world  of  his  own.  Or  he  may  rather 
have    several    worlds    without    rational    unity,   con- 

,  joined  merely  by  co-existence  in  his  one  personality. 
And  this  separation  and  disconnectedness  (we  may 
fail  to  observe)  is,  in  some  degree,  normal.  It 
would  be  impossible  that  any  man  should  have  a 
world,  the  various  provinces  of  which  were  quite 
rationally  connected,  or  appeared  always  in  system. 
But,  if  so,  no  one,  in  accepting  or  rejecting  ideas, 
can  always  know  the  precise  sense  in  which  he 
affirms  or  denies.  He  means,  from  time  to  time,  by 
reality  some  one  region  of  the  Real,  which  habitually 
he  fails  to  distinguish  and  define.  And  the  attempt 
at  distinction  would  but  lead  him  to  total  bewilder- 
ment. The  real  world,  perhaps  consciously,  may  be 
identified  with  the  spatial  system  which  we  con- 
struct. This  is  "actual  fact,"  and  everything  else 
may  be  set  apart  as  mere  thought,  or  as  mere  imagi- 
nation or   feeling,   all   equally  unreal.     But,  if  so, 


'i 


i 


368 


REALITY. 


against  our  wills  these  banished  regions,  neverthe 
less,  present  themselves  as  the  worlds  of  feehng, 
imagination,  and  thought.  However  little  we  desire 
it,  these  form,  in  effect,  actual  constituent  factors  in 
our  real  universe.  And  the  ideas,  belonging  to 
these  several  fields,  certainly  cannot  be  entertained 
without  an  identification,  however  vague,  of  each 
with  its  department  of  the  Real.  \Ve  treat  the 
imaginary  as  existing  somehow  in  some  world,  or  in 
some  by-world,  of  the  imagination.  And,  in  spite  of 
our  denial,  all  such  worlds  are  for  us  inevitably  the 
appearances  of  that  whole,  which  we  feel  to  be  a 
single  Reality.' 

And,  even  when  we  consider  the  extreme  cases  of 
command  and  of  wish,  our  conclusion  is  unshaken. 
A  desire  is  not  a  judgment,  but  still  in  a  sense  it 
implies  one.  It  might,  indeed,  appear  that  what  is 
ordered  or  desired  is,  by  its  essence,  divorced  from 
all  actual  reality.  But  this  first  impression  would 
be  erroneous.  All  negation,  we  must  remember,  is 
relative.  The  idea,  rejected  by  reality,  is  none  the 
less  predicable,  when  its  subject  is  altered.  And  it 
is  predicable  again,  when  (what  comes  to  the  same 
thing)  itself  is  modified.  Neglecting  this  latter  re- 
finement, we  may  point  out  how  our  account  will 
hold  good  in  the  case  of  desire.  The  content 
wished  for,  certainly  in  one  sense,  is  absent  from 
reality  ;  and  the  idea,  we  must  be  able  to  say.  does 
not  exist.  But  rcid  existence,  on  the  other  hand, 
has  been  taken  here  in  a  limited  meaning.  And 
hence,  outside  that  region  of  fact  which  repels  the 
idea,  it  can,  at  the  same  time,  be  affirmatively 
referred  to  reality.  It  is  this  reference  indeed 
which,  we  may  say,  makes  the  contradiction  of  desire 
intolerable.    'That  which  1  desire  is  not  consciously 

'  The  reader  may  compare  here  the  discussion  on  the  unity  of 
nature  in  Chapter  xxii.  The  want  of  unity  in  the  self,  a  point 
established  by  general  psycliology,  has  been  thrown  inio  promi- 
nence by  recent  experiments  in  hypnotism. 


DEGREES  OF  TRUTH  AND  REALITY. 


369 


Tlissumed  to  exist,  but  still  vaguely,  somehow  and  in 
some  strange  region,  it  is  felt  to  be  there  ;  and, 
because  it  is  there,  its  non-appearance  excites  painful 
.tension.  Pursuing  this  subject  we  should  find  that, 
in  every  case  in  the  end,  to  be  thought  of  is  to  be 
entertained  as,  and  so  judged  to  be,  real 

{6)  And  this  leads  us  to  the  second  point.  We 
have  seen  that  every  idea,  however  imaginary,  is, 
in  a  sense,  referred  to  reality.  But  we  saw  also 
that,  with  regard  to  the  various  meanings  of  the  real 
subject,  and  the  diverse  provinces  and  regions  in 
which  it  appears,  we  are  all,  more  or  less,  uncon- 
scious. This  same  want  of  consciousness,  in  vary- 
ing amounts,  is  visible  also  in  our  way  of  applying 
the  predicate.'  Every  idea  can  be  made  the  true 
adjective  of  reality,  but,  on  the  other  hand  (as  we 
have  seen),  every  idea  must  be  altered.  More  or 
less,  they  all  require  a  supplementation  and  re- 
arrangement. But  of  this  necessity,  and  of  the 
amount  of  it,  we  may  be  totally  unaware.  We 
commonly  use  ideas  with  no  clear  notion  as  to  how 
far  they  are  conditional,  and  are  incapable  of  being 
predicated  downright  of  reality.  To  the  supposi- 
tions implied  in  our  statements  we  usually  are  blind; 
or  the  precise  extent  of  them  is,  at  all  events,  not 
distinctly  realized.  This  is  a  subject,  upon  which  it 
might  be  interesting  to  enlarge,  but  I  have  perhaps 
already  said  enough  to  make  good  our  result. 
However  little  it  may  appear  so,  to  think  is  always. 


1  As  was  before  remarked,  these  two  points,  in  the  end,  are 
the  same.  Since  the  various  worlds,  in  which  reality  appears, 
cannot  each  stand  alone,  but  must  condition  one  the  other, 
hence  that  which  is  predicated  categorically  of  one  world,  will 
none  the  less  be  conditional,  when  applied  to  the  whole.  And, 
from  the  other  side,  a  conditional  predicate  of  the  whole  will 
become  categorical,  if  made  the  adjective  of  a  subject  which  is- 
limited,  and  therefore  is  conditional.  These  ways  of  regarding 
the  matter,  in  the  end,  are  but  one  way.  And,  in  the  end,  there 
is  no  difference  between  conrlitional  and  conditioned.  On  this 
point  see  farther  Chapter  xxvii. 

A.  R.  B  B 


370 


REALITY. 


in  effect,  to  judge.     And    all  judgments  we  have/ 
found   to    be  more   or   less   true,   and    in   different/ 
degrees  to  depart  from,  and  to  realize,  the  standard.  • 
With    this    we    may    return    from    what    has*  been, 
perhaps  to  some  extent,  a  digression. 

Our  single  standard,  as  we  saw  above,  wears 
various  aspects,  and  I  will  now  proceed  briefly  to 
exemplify  its  detail,  (a)  If  we  take,  first,  an  ap- 
pearance in  time,  and  desire  to  estimate  the  amount 
of  its  reality,  we  have,  on  one  side,  to  consider  its 
harmoniousness.  We  have  to  ask,  that  is,  how  far, 
before  its  contents  can  take  their  place  as  an  adjec- 
tive of  the  Real,  they  would  require  re-arrangement. 
We  have  to  enquire  how  far,  in  other  words,  these 
contents  are,  or  are  not,  self-consistent  and  system- 
atic. And  then,  on  the  other  side,  we  must  have 
regard  to  the  extent  of  time,  or  space,  or  both, 
which  our  appearance  occupies.*  Other  things 
being  equal,  whatever  spreads  more  widely  in  space, 
or  again  lasts  longer  in  time,  is  therefore  more 
real.  But  (A),  beside  events,  it  is  necessary  to  take 
account  of  laws.  These  are  more  and  less  abstract 
or  concrete,  and  here  our  standard  in  its  application 
will  once  more  diverge.  The  abstract  truths,  for 
example,  of  mathematics  on  one  side,  and,  on  the 
other  side,  the  more  concrete  connections  of  life  or 
mind,  will  each  set  up  a  varying  claim.  The  first  are 
jnore  remote  from  fact,  more  empty  and  incapable 
of  self-existence,  and  they  are  therefore  less  true. 
But  the  second,  on  the  other  hand,  are  narrower, 
and  on  this  account  more  false,  since  clearly  they 
pervade,  and  hold  good  over,  a  less  extent  of  reality. 
Or,  from  the  other  side,  the  law  which  is  more 
abstract  contradicts  itself  more,  because  it  is  deter- 

'  The  intensity  of  the  appearance  can  be  referred,  I  think,  to 
two  heads,  (i.)  that  of  extent,  and  (ii.)  that  of  effectiveness.  But 
the  influence  of  a  thing  outside  of  its  own  limits  will  fall  under  an 
aspect  to  be  mentioned  lower  down  (p,  376). 


DEGREES    OF    TRUTH    AND    REALITY. 


37' 


mined  by  exclusion  from  a  wider  area.     Again  the 

generalization  nearer  sense,  being  fuller  of  irre- 
levancy, will,  looked  at  from  this  point  of  view,  be 
more  internally  discordant.  In  brief,  whether  the 
system  and  the  true  individual  is  sought  in  temporal 
existence,  or  in  the  realm  standing  above  events, 
the  standard  still  is  the  same.  AndJJLis  jipplied 
always  under  the  double  form  orinclusiveness  and 
"Tiarmqny.  To  be  deficient  in  either  of  these  aspects 
IS  to  fall  short  of  perfection  ;  and,  in  the  end,  any 
deficiency  implies  failure  in  both  aspects  alike. 

And  we  shall  find  that  our  account  still  holds  good 
when  we  pass  on  to  consider  higher  appearances  of 
the  universe.  It  would  be  a  poor  world  which  con- 
sisted merely  of  phenomenal  events,  and  of  the  laws 
that  somehow  reign  above  them.  And  in  our  every- 
day life  we  soon  transcend  this  unnatural  divorce 
between  principle  and  fact,  (c)  We  reckon  an  event 
to  be  important  in  proportion  to  its  effectiveness,  so 
far  as  its  being,  that  is,  spreads  in  influence  beyond 
the  area  of  its  private  limits.  It  is  obvious  that- here 
the  two  features,  of  self-sufficiency  and  self-tran- 
scendence, are  already  discrepant.  We  reach  a 
higher  stage  where  some  existence  embodies,  or  in 
any  way  presents  in  itself,  a  law  and  a  principle. 
However,  in  the  mere  e.\ample  and  instance  of  an 
universal  truth,  the  fact  and  the  law  are  still  essen- 
tially alien  to  each  other,  and  the  defective  character 
of  their  union  is  plainly  visible.  Our  standard 
moves  us  on  towards  an  individual  with  laws  of  its 
own,  and  to  laws  which  form  the  vital  substance  of 
a  single  existence.  And  -an  imperfect  appearance 
of  this  character  we  were  compelled,  in  our  last 
chapter,  to  recognize  in  the  individual  habits  of  the 
soul.  Further  in  the  beauty,  which  presents  us 
with  a  realized  type,  we  find  another  form  of  the 
union  of  fact  with  principle.  And,  passing  from  this 
to  conscious  life,  we  are  called  on  stiU  for  further 
uses  and  fresh  applications  of  our  standard.      In  the 


372 


REALITY, 


will  of  the  individual,  or  of  the  community,  so  far  as 
adequately  carried  out  and  expressing  itself  in  out- 
ward fact,  we  have  a  new  claim  to  harmonious  and 
self-included  reality.  And  we  have  to  consider 
in  each  case  the  consistency,  together  with  the  range 
and  area,  of  the  principle,  and  the  degree  up  to 
which  it  has  mastered  and  passed  into  existence. 
And  we  should  find  ourselves  led  on  from  this,  by 
partial  defect,  to  higher  levels  of  being.  We  should 
arrive  at  the  personal  relation  of  the  individual  to 
ends  theoretical  and  practical,  ends  which  call  for 
realization,  but  which  from  their  nature  cannot  be 
realized  in  a  finite  personality.  And,  once  more 
here,  our  standard  must  be  called  in  when  we  endea- 
vour, as  we  must,  to  form  a  comparative  estimate. 
For,  apart  from  the  success  or  failure  of  the  indi- 
vidual's will,  these  ideas  of  ultimate  goodness  and 
reality  themselves  possess,  of  course,  very  different 
values.  And  we  have  to  measure  the  amount  of 
discordancy  and  limitation,  which  fixes  the  place  to 
be  assigned,  in  each  case,  to  these  various  appear- 
ances of  the  Absolute. 

To  some  of  these  provinces  of  life  I  shall  have  to 
return  in  later  chapters.  But  there  are  several 
points  to  which,  at  present,  I  would  draw  attention. 
I  would  repeat,  first,  that  I  am  not  undertaking  to 
set  out  completely  the  different  aspects  of  the  world  ; 
nor  am  1  trying  to  arrange  these  according  to  their 
comparative  degrees  of  reality  and  truth.  A  serious 
attempt  to  perform  this  would  have  to  be  made  by 
any  rational  system  of  first  principles,  but  in  this 
work  I  am  dealing  solely  with  some  main  features 
of  things.  However,  in  the  second  place,  there  is  a 
consideration  which  I  would  urge  on  the  reader. 
With  any  view  of  the  world  which  confines  known 
reality  to  existence  in  time,  and  which  limits  truth 
to  the  attempt  to  reproduce  somehow  the  series  of 
events — with   any   view   for  which   merely  a  thing 


DEGREES   OF    TRUTH    AND    REALITY. 


37i 


exists,  or  barely  does  not  exist,  and  for  which  an 
idea  is  false,  or  else  is  true — how  is  it  possible  to  be 
just  to  the  various  orders  of  appearance  ?  For,  if 
we  are  consistent,  we  shall  send  the  mass  of  our 
chief  human  interests  away  to  some  unreal  limbo  of 
undistinguished  degradation.  And,  if  we  are  not 
consistent,  yet  how  can  we  proceed  rationally  with- 
out an  intellectual  standard  ?  And  I  think  we  are 
driven  to  this  alternative.  We  must  either  be  incap- 
able of  saying  one  word  on  the  relative  importance 
of  things  ;  we  can  tell  nothing  of  the  comparative 
meaning,  and  place  in  the  world,  owned  by  art,* 
science,  religion,  social  life  or  morality  ;  we  are 
wholly  ignorant  as  to  the  degrees  of  truth  and  reality 
which  these  possess,  and  we  cannot  even  say  that 
for  the  universe  any  one  of  them  has  any  signific- 
ance, makes  any  degree  of  difference,  or  matters  at 
all.  Either  this,  or  else  our  one-sided  view  must 
be  revolutionized.  But,  so  far  as  I  see,  it  can  be 
revolutionized  only  in  one  of  two  ways.  We  may 
accept  a  view  of  truth  and  reality  such  as  I  have 
been  endeavouring  to  indicate,  or  we  must  boldly 
subordinate  everything  to  the  test  of  feeling.  I  do 
not  mean  that,  beside  our  former  inadequate  ideal 
of  truth,  we  should  set  up,  also  and  alongside,  an 
independent  standard  of  worth.  For  this  expedient, 
first,  would  leave  no  clear  sense  to  "  degrees  of 
truth"  or  "of  reality";  and,  in  the  second  place, 
practically  our  two  standards  would  tend  everywhere 
to  clash.  They  would  collide  hopelessly  without 
appeal  to  any  unity  above  them.  Of  some  religious 
belief,  for  example,  or  of  some  aesthetic  representa- 
tion, we  might  be  compelled  to  exclaim,  "  How 
wholly  false,  and  yet  how  superior  to  truth,  and  how 
much  more  to  us  than  any  possible  reality."  And 
of  some  successful  and  wide-embracing  theory  we 
might  remark  that  it  was  absolutely  true  and  utterly 
despicable,  or  of  some  physical  facts,  perhaps,  that 
they  deserved  no  kind  of  attention.     Such  a  separa- 


I 


374 


REALITY. 


tion  of  worth  from  reality  and  truth  would  mutilate 
our  nature,  and  could  end  only  in  irrational  compro- 
mise or  oscillation.  But  this  shifting  attitude,  though 
common  in  life,  seems  here  inadmissible  ;  and  it  was 
not  this  that  I  meant  by  a  subordination  to  feeling. 
I  pointed  to  something  less  possible,  but  very  much 
more  consistent.  It  would  imply  the  setting  up  of 
feeling  in  some  form  as  an  absolute  test,  not  only  of 
value  but  also  of  truth  and  reality.  Here,  if  we 
took  feeling  as  our  end,  and  identified  it  with  plea- 
sure, we  might  assert  of  some  fact,  no  matter  how 
palpable,  This  is  absolutely  nothing.  Or,  because 
it  makes  for  pain,  it  is  even  worse,  and  is  therefore 
even  less  than  nothing.  Or  because  some  truth, 
however  obvious,  seemed  in  our  opinion  not  favour- 
able to  the  increase  of  pleasure,  we  should  have  to 
treat  it  at  once  as  sheer  falsehood  and  error.  And 
by  such  an  attitude,  however  impracticable,  we 
should  have  at  least  ined  io  introduce  some  sort  of 
unity  and  meaning  into  our  world.' 

But  if  to  make  mere  feeling  our  one  standard  is  in 
the  end  impossible,  if  we  cannot  rest  in  the  intoler- 
able confusion  of  a  double  test  and  control,  nor  can  re- 
lapse into  the  narrowness,  and  the  inconsistency, 
of  our  old  mutilated  view — we  must  take  courage  to 
accept  the  other  revolution.  We  must  reject  wholly 
the  idea  that  known  reality  consists  in  a  series  of 
events,  external  or  inward,  and  that  truth  merely  is 
correspondence  with  such  a  form  of  existence.  We 
must  allow  to  every  appearance  alike  its  own  degree 
of  reality,  if  not  also  of  truth,-  and  we  must  every- 

'  Such  an  attitude,  beside  being  impracticable,  would,  however 
still,  be  internally  inconsistent.  It  breaks  down  in  the  position 
which  it  gives  to  truth.  The  Lnderslanding,  .so  far  as  used  to 
judge  of  the  tendencies  of  things,  is  still  partly  independent.  We 
either  then  are  forced  back,  as  before,  to  a  double  standard,  or  we 
have  to  make  mere  feeling  the  judge  also  with  regard  to  these  ten- 
dencies. And  this  is  clearly  to  end  in  mere  momentary  caprice, 
and  in  anarchy. 

*  Whether,  and  in  what  sense,  every  appearance  of  the  Reality 
has  truth,  is  a  point  taken  up  later  in  Chapter  xxvi. 


DEGREES   OK   TRUTH    AND    REALITV. 


375 


where  estimate  this  degree  by  the  application  of  our 
single  standard.  I  am  not  here  attemptino^  even 
(as  I  have  said)  to  make  this  estimate  in  general  ; 
and,  in  detail,  I  admit  that  we  might  find  cases 
where  rational  comparison  seems  hopeless.  But  our 
failure  in  this  respect  would  justify  no  doubt  about 
our  principle.  It  would  be  solely  through  our  ignor- 
ance and  our  deficiency  that  the  standard  ever  could 
be  inapplicable.  And,  at  the  cost  of  repetition,  I 
may  be  permitted  to  dwell  briefly  on  this  head, 
.  Our  standard  is  Reality  in  the  form  of/self-exist-l 
[ence  ;  and  this,  given  plurality  and  relations,  means! 
Ian  individual  system.  Now  we  have  shown  that 
\no  perfect  system  can  possibly  be  finite,  because  any 
uimitation  from  the  outside  infects  the  inner  content 
with  dependence  on  what  is  alien.  And  hence  the 
marks  of  harmony  and  expansion  are  two  aspects 
of  one  principle.  With  regard  to  harmony  (other 
things  remaining  the  same),  that  which  has  extended 
over  and  absorbed  a  greater  area  of  the  external, 
will  internally  be  less  divided.'  And  the  more  ark 
element  is  consistent,  the  more  ground,  other  things 
being  equal,  is  it  likely  to  cover.  And  if  we  forget 
this  truth,  in  the  case  of  what  is  either  abstracted 
for  thought  or  is  isolated  for  sense,  we  can  recall  it 
by  predicating  these  fragments,  as  such,  of  the  Uni- 
verse. We  are  then  forced  to  perceive  both  the  in- 
consistency of  our  predicates,  and  the  large  extent  of 
outer  supplement  which  we  must  add,  if  we  wish  to 
make  them  true.  Mence  the  amount  of  either  wide- 
ness  or  consistency  gives  the  degree  of  reality  and 
also  of  truth.  Or,  regarding  the  same  thing  from 
the  other  side,  you  may  estimate  by  what  is  lacking. 
You  may  measure  the  reality  of  anything  by  the 
relative  amount  of  transformation,  which  would  fol- 
low if  its  defects  were  made  good.     The  more  an 

1  The  reader  must  not  forget  here  that  the  inconsistency  and 
distraction,  which  cannot  be  felt,  is  therefore  the  greatest  (p.  364). 
Feeling  is  itself  a  unity  and  a  solution,  however  incomplete. 


I 


Z7^ 


REALITY. 


appearance,  in  being-  corrected,  is  transmuted  and 
destroyed,  the  less  reality  can  such  an  appearance 
contain  ;  or,  to  put  it  otherwise,  the  less  genuinely 
does  it  represent  the  Real.  And  on  this  princi£le_ 
we  succeeded  in  attaching  a  clear  sense  to  that  nebul- 
ous phrase  "  Validity. " 

And  this  standard,  in  principle  at  least,  is  applic- 
able to  every  kind  of  subject-matter.  For  everything, 
directly  or  indirectly,  and  with  a  greater  or  less 
preservation  of  its  internal  unity,  has  a  relative  space 
in  Reality.  For  instance,  the  mere  intensity  of  a 
pleasure  or  pain,  beside  its  occupancy  of  conscious- 
ness, has  also  an  outer  sphere  or  halo  of  efifects. 
And  in  some  low  sense  these  effects  make  a  part  of, 
or  at  least  belong  to,  its  being.  And  with  facts  of 
perception  their  e.xtent  both  in  time,  and  also  in  space, 
obviously  gives  us  a  point  of  comparison  between 
them.  If,  again,  we  take  an  abstract  truth,  which, 
as  such,  nowhere  has  e.xistence,  we  can  consider  the 
comparative  area  of  its  working  influence.  And,  if 
■we  were  inclined  to  feel  a  doubt  as  to  the  reality 
of  such  principles,  we  might  correct  ourselves  thus. 
Imagine  everything,  which  they  represent,  removed 
from  the  universe,  and  then  attempt  to  maintain 
that  this  removal  makes  no  real  difference.  And, 
as  we  proceed  further,  a  social  system,  conscious  in 
its  persona]  members  of  a  will  carried  out,  submits 
itself  naturally  to  our  test.  VV^e  must  notice  here 
the  higher  development  of  concrete  internal  unity. 
For  we  find  an  individuality,  subordinating  to  itself 
outward  fact,  though  not,  as  such,  properly  visible 
within  it.  This  superiority  to  mere  appearance  in 
the  temporal  series  is  carried  to  a  higher  degree  as 
we  advance  into  the  worlds  of  religion,  speculation, 
and  art.  The  inward  principle  may  here  become 
far  wider,  and  with  an  intenser  unity  of  its  own  ;  but, ' 
on  the  side  of  temporal  existence,  it  cannot  po.ssibly  i 
exhibit  itself  as  such.     The  higher  the  principle,  and  ' 


DEGREES  OF  TRUTH  AND  REALITY. 


377 


the  more  vitally  it,  so  to  speak,  possesses  the  soul 

of  things,  so  much  the  wider  in  proportion  must  be 

that  sphere  of  events  which   in  the  end  it  controls. 

.  IJut,  just  for  this  reason,  such  a  principle  cannot  be 

mandled  or  seen,  nor  is  it  in  any  way  given  to  out- 

Iward  or  inward  perception.      It  is  only  the  meanest 

/realities  which  can  ever  so  be  revealed,  and  which 

/  are  able  to  be  verified  as  sensible  facts. 


And  it  is  only  a  standard,  such  as  ours,  which  can 
assign  its  proper  rank  to  sense-presentation.  It  is 
solely  by  accepting  such  a  test  that  we  are  able  to 
avoid  two  gross  and  opposite  mistakes.  There  is 
a  view  which  takes,  or  attempts  to  take,  sense-per- 
ception as  the  one  known  reality.  And  there  is 
a  view  which  endeavours,  on  the  other  side,  to  con- 
sider appearance  in  time  as  sometliing  indifferent. 
It  tries  to  find  reality  in  the  world  of  insensible 
thought.  Both  mistakes  lead,  in  the  end,  to  a  like 
false  result,  and  both  imply,  and  are  rooted  in,  the 
same  principle  of  error.  In  the  end  each  would 
force  us  to  embrace  as  complete  reality  a  meagre  and 
mutilated  fraction,  which  is  therefore  also,  and  in 
consequence,  internally  discrepant.  And  each  is 
based  upon  one  and  the  same  error  about  the  nature 
of  things.  We  have  seen  that  the  separation  of  the 
real  into  idea  and  existence  is  a  division  admis- 
sible only  within  the  world  of  appearance.  In  the 
Absolute  every  such  distinction  must  be  merged 
and  disappears.  But  the  disappearance  of  each  ' 
aspect,  we  insisted  also,  meant  the  satisfaction  of  its 
claims  in  full.  And  hence,  though  how  in  detail  we 
were  unable  to  point  out,  either  side  must  come 
together  with  its  opposite  in  the  Whole.  There 
thought  and  sense  alike  find  each'  its  complement 
in  the  other.  The  principle  that  reality  can  wholly 
consist  in  one  of  these  two  sides  of  appearance,  we 
therefore  reject  as  a  fundamental  error. 

Let  us  consider  more   closely  the  two  delusions 


I 


378 


REALITY. 


which  have  branched  from  this  stem.  The  first  of 
these,  perceivincj  th;it  the  series  of  events  is  essen- 
tial, concludes  from  this  ground  that  mere  sense, 
either  outward  or  inward,  is  the  one  reaHty.  Or,  if 
it  stops  short  of  this,  it  still  argues  that  to  be  real  is 
to  be,  as  such,  perceptible.  Because,  that  is,  appear- 
ance in  the  temporal  series  is  found  necessary  for 
reality  ' — a  premise  which  is  true — an  unconscious 
passage  is  made,  from  this  truth,  to  a  vicious  con- 
clusion. To  appear  is  construed  to  imply  appearance 
always,  so  to  speak,  in  [jerson.  And  nothing  is 
allowed  to  be  real,  unless  it  can  be  given  bodily, 
and  can  be  revealed,  within  one  piece  of  the  series. 
Hut  this  conclusion  is  radically  erroneous.  No  per- 
ception ever,  as  we  have  seen  clearly,  has  a  charactei 
contained  within  itself.  In  order  to  be  f^ct  at  all 
each  presentation  must  e.xhibit  ideality,  or  in  othei 
words  transcendence  of  self;  and  that,  which  ap- 
pears at  any  one  moment,  is,  as  such,  self-contra- 
dictory. And,  from  the  other  side,  the  less  a. 
character  is  able,  as  such,  to  appear — the  less  its 
necessary  manifestation  can  be  narrowed  in  time  or 
in  space — so  much  the  more  is  it  capable  of  both 
expansion  and  inner  harmony.  But  these  two 
features,  as  we  saw,  are  the  marks  of  reality. 

And  the  second  of  the  mistakes  is  like  the  first. 
Appearance,  once  more,  is  falsely  identified  with 
presentation,  as  such,  to  sense  ;  and  a  wrong  con- 
clusion is,  once  more,  drawn  from  this  basis.  But 
the  error  now  proceeds  in  an  ojjposite  direction. 
Because  the  highest  principles  are,  obviously  and 
plainly,  not  perceptible  by  sense,  they  are  taken  to 
inhabit  and  to  have  their  being  in  the  world  of  pure 
thought.  And  this  other  region,  with  more  or  less, 
consistency,  is  held  to  constitute  the  sole  reality. 
But  here,  if  excluded  wholly  from  the  serial  flow  of 
events,   this  world  of  thought  is  limited  externally 


'  Compare  here  Chapters  xix.  and  xxiii. 


%M' 


■A' 


./^     DEGREES  OF  TRUTH  AND  REALITY. 


379 


and  is  intemallv-dJacordant.  While,  if,  further,  we 
attempt  to  qualify  the  universe  by  our  mere  itleal 
abstract,  and  to  attach  this  content  to  the  Reahty 
which  appears  in  perception,  the  confusion  becomes 
more  obvious.  Since  the  sense-appearance  has  been 
given  up,  as  alien  to  truth,  it  has  been  in  conse- 
quence set  free,  and  is  entirely  insubordinate.  And 
its  concrete  character  now  evidently  determines,  and 
infects  from  the  outside,  whatever  mere  thought  we 
are  endeavouring  to  predicate  of  the  Real.  But  the 
union  in  all  perception  of  thought  with  sense,  the 
co-presence  everywhere  in  all  appearances  of  fact 
with  ideality — this  is  the  one  foundation  of  truth. 
And,  when  we  add  to  this  the  saving  distinction 
that  to  have  existence  need  not  mean  to  e.xist.  and 
that  to  be  realized  in  time  is  not  always  to  be  visible 
by  any  sense,  we  have  made  ourselves  secure  against 
the  worst  of  errors.  From  this  we  are  soon  led  to 
qur  priQcjp.le  of  degrees  in  truth  and  reality.  Our 
world  and  our  life  need  then  no  loiiger  be  made  up 
arbitrarily.  They  need  not  be  compounded  of  the 
two  hemispheres  of  fact  and  fancy.  Nor  need  the 
Absolute  reveal  itself  indiscriminately  in  a  chaos 
where  comparison  and  value  are  absent.  We  can 
assign  a  rational  meaning  to  the  distinctions  of 
higher  and  lower.'  And  we  have  grown  convinced 
that,  while  not  to  appear  is  to  be  unreal,  and  while 
the  fuller  appearance  marks  the  fuller  reality,  our 
principle,  with  but  so  much,  is  only  half  stated.  For 
comparative  ability  to  exist,  individually  and  as  such, 
within  the  region  of  sense,  is  a  sign  everywhere,  so 
far  as  it  goes,  of  degradation  in  the  scale  of  being. 

Or,  dealing  with  the  question  somewhat  less 
abstractly,  we  may  attempt  otherwise  to  indicate 
the  true  position  of  temporal  existence.  This,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  not  reality,  but  it  is,  on  the  other  hand, 
in   our  experience  one    essential   factor.      And    to 

*  The  position  which,  in  estinialing  value,  is  to  be  assigned  to 
pleasure  and  pain  will  be  discussed  in  Chapter  xxv. 


38o 


REALITY. 


suppose  that  mere  tliought  without  facts  could  either 
be  real,  or  could  reach  to  truth,  is  evidently  absurd. 
The  series  of  events  is,  without  doubt,  necessary 
for  our  knowledge,'  since  this  series  supplies  the  one 
source  of  all  ideal  content.  We  may  say,  roughly 
and  with  sufficient  accuracy,  that  there  is  nothing  in 
thought,  whether  it  be  matter  or  relations,  except 
that  which  is  derived  from  perception.  And,  in  the 
second  place,  it  is  only  by  starting  from  the  pre- 
sented basis  that  we  construct  our  system  of  phen- 
omena in  space  and  time.  We  certainly  perceived 
{Chapter  xviii.)  that  any  such  constructed  unity  was 
but  relative,  imperfect,  and  partial.  But,  none  the 
less,  a  building  up  of  the  sense-world  from  the 
ground  of  actual  presentation  is  a  condition  of  all 
our  knowledge.  It  is  not  true  that  everything,  even 
if  temporal,  has  a  place  in  our  one  "  real  "  order  of 
space  or  time.  But,  indirectly  or  directly,  every 
known  element  must  be  connected  with  its  sequence 
of  events,  and,  at  least  in  some  sense,  must  show 
itself  even  there.  The  test  of  truth  after  all,  we 
may  say,  lies  in  presented  fact. 

We  should  here  try  to  avoid  a  serious  mistake. 
Without  existence  we  have  perceived  that  thought 
is  incomplete ;  but  this  does  not  mean  that,  without 
existence,  mere  thought  in  itself  is  complete  fully, 
and  that  existence  to  this  super-adds  an  alien  but 
necessary  completion.  For  we  have  found  in 
principle  that,  if  anything  were  perfect,  tt  would  not 
gain  by  an  addition  made  from  the  outside.  And, 
here  in  particular,  thought's  first  object,  in  its  pur- 
suit of  actual  fact,  is  precisely  the  enlarging  and 
making  harmonious  of  its  own  ideal  content  And 
the  reason  for  this,  as  soon  as  we  consider  it,  is 
obvious.  The  dollar,  merely  thought  of  or  imagined, 
is  comparatively  abstract  and  void  of  properties. 
But  the  dollar,  verified  in  space,  has  got  its  place 

'  The  series,  in  its  proper  character,  is,  of  course,  an  ideal  con- 
struction.    But  we  may  disregard  that  here. 


DEGREES    OF   TRUTH    AND    REALITY. 


381 


in,  and  is  determined  by,  an  enormous  construction 
of  things.  And  to  suppose  that  tlie  concrete  con- 
text of  these  relations  in  no  sense  qualifies  its  inner 
content,  or  that  this  quahfication  is  a  matter  of  in- 
difference to  thouijht,  is  quite  indefensible. 

A  mere  thought  would  mean  an  ideal  content 
held  apart  from  existence.  But  (as  we  have  learnt) 
to  hold  a  thought  is  always  somehow,  even  against 
our  will,  to  refer  it  to  the  Real.  Hence  our  mere 
idea,  now  standing  in  relation  with  the  Real,  is  re- 
lated also  to  the  phenomenal  system  of  events  in  time. 
It  is  related  to  them,  but  without  any  connection 
with  the  internal  order  and  arrangements  of  their  sys- 
tem. But  this  means  that  our  mere  idea  is  determined 
by  that  system  entirely  from  the  outside.  And  it  will 
therefore  itself  be  permeated  internally,  and  so  de- 
stroyed, by  the  contingency  forced  into  its  content 
through  these  chaotic  relations.  Considered  from 
this  side,  a  thought,  if  it  actually  were  bare,  would 
stand  at  a  level  lower  than  the,  so-called,  chance 
facts  of  sense.  For  in  the  latter  we  have,  at  least. 
some  internal  connection  with  the  context,  and 
already  a  fixed  relation  of  universals,  however 
impure. 

All  reality  must  be  revealed  in  the  world  of 
events ;  and  that  is  most  real  which,  within  such  an 
order  or  orders,  finds  least  foreign  to  itself  Hence, 
if  other  things  remain  equal,  a  definite  place  in,  and 
connection  with,  the  temporal  system  gives  increase 
of  reality.  For  thus  the  relations  to  other  elements, 
which  must  in  any  case  determine,  determine,  at 
least  to  some  extent,  internally.  And  thus  the 
imaginary,  so  far,  must  be  poorer  than  the  percep- 
tible fact ;  or,  in  other  words,  it  is  compulsorily 
qualified  by  a  wider  area  of  alien  and  destructive 
relations.  I  have  emphasized  "  if  other  things  re- 
main equal,"  for  this  restriction  is  important.  There 
is  imagination  which  is  higher,  and  more  true,  and 
most  emphatically  more  real,  than  any  single  fact 


382 


REALITY. 


of  sense.     And  this  brings  us  back  to  our  old  dis- 
tinction.    Every  truth  must  appear,  and  must  subor- 
dinate   existence ;    but  this  appearance    is  not    the 
same  thing  as  to  be  present,  properly  and  as  such, 
within  given  limits  of  sense-perception.     With  the 
general   principles  of  science  we   may  perhaps  see 
this  at  once.     And  again,  with  regard  to  the  neces- 
sary appearances  of  art  or  religion,  the  same  con- 
clusion is  evident.     The  eternal  experience,  in  every 
case,  fails  to  enter  into   the  series  of  space  or  of 
time  ;  or  it  enters  that  series  improperly,  and  with 
a  show  which  in  various  ways  contradicts  its  essence. 
To  be  nearer  the  central  heart  of  things  is  to  domin- 
ate the  extremities  more  widely;  but  it  is  not  to 
appear    there    e.\cept    incompletely    and    partially 
through  a  sign,  an  unsubstantial  and  a  fugitive  mode 
of  expression.      Nothing  anywhere,    not    even    the 
realized  and   solid   moral   will,  can  either  be  quite 
real,  as  it  exists  in   time,  or  can  quite  appear  in  its 
own    essential    character.       But   still    the   ultimate 
Reality,  where  all  appearance  as  such  is  mergedT^Ts"^ 
in  the  end  the  actual  identity  of  idea  and  existence. 
And,  throughout  our  world,  whatever  is  individual 
is  more  real  and  true  ;  for  it  contains  within  its  own 
limits  a  wider  region  of  the  Absolute,  and  it  posses- 
ses more  intensely  the  type  of  self-sufficiency.     Or, 
to   put    it  otherwise,  the  interval   between  such  an 
element  and  the  Absolute  is  smaller.     We  should 
require  less  alteration,  less  destruction  of  its  own 
special  nature,  in  order  to  make  this  higher  element 
completely  real. 

We  may  now  pass  from  this  general  principle  to 
notice  various  points  of  interest,  and,  in  the  first 
place,  to  consider  some  difficulties  handed  on  to  this 

i  chapter.  The  problems  of  unperceived  Nature,  of 
dispositions  in  the  soul,  and  the  meaning  in  general 
of  "  potential "  existence,  require  our  attention. 
And    I   must  begin  by  calling  attention  to  an  error. 


DEGREES   OF   TRUTH    AND    REALITY. 


383 


JWe  have  seen  that  an  idea  is  more  true  in  propor- 
jtion  as  it  approaches  Reality.  And  it  approaches 
vReality  in  proportion  as  it  grows  internally  more 
complete.  And  from  this  we  possibly  misjht  con- 
clude that  thought,  if  completed  as  such,  would 
itself  be  real  ;  or  that  the  ideal  conditions,  if  fully 
there,  would  be  the  same  as  actual  perfection.  But 
such  a  conclusion  would  not  hold ;  for  we  have 
found  that  mere  thought  could  never,  as  such,  be 
completed  ;  and  it  therefore  remains  internally  in- 
consistent and  defective.  And  we  have  perceived, 
on  the  other  side,  that  thought,  completed,  is  forced 
to  transcend  itself.  It  has  then  to  become  one 
thing  with  sense  and  feeling.  And,  since  these 
conditions  of  its  perfection  are  partly  ahen  to  itself, 
we  cannot  say  either  that,  by  itself,  it  can  arrive  at 
completion,  or  that,  when  perfected,  it,  as  such,  any 
longer  e.xists. 

And,  with  this,  we  may  advance  to  the  considera- 
tion of  several  questions.  We  found  (Chapter  .\.xii.) 
that  parts  of  the  physical  world  might  exist,  and 
yet  might  exist,  for  us,  only  in  the  shape  of  thought. 
But  we  realized  also  th^it  in  the  Absolute,  where  the 
contents  of  all  finite  selves  are  fused,  these  thought- 
existences  naust,  in  some  way,  be  re-combined  with 
sense.  And  the  same  conclusion  held  good  also 
with  psychical  dispositions  (Chapter  xxiii.).  These, 
in  their  proper  character,  have  no  being  except  in 
the  world  of  thought  For  they,  as  we  saw,  are  con- 
ditional ;  and  the  conditional,  as  such,  has  not  actual 
existence.  But  once  more  here  the  ideas — how  in 
detail  we  cannot  say — must  find  their  complement 
in  the  Whole.  With  the  addition  of  this  other  side 
lliey  will  make  part  of  the  concrete  Reality. 

Our  present  chapter,  perhaps,  may  have  helped 
us  to  see  more  clearly  on  these  points.  For  we 
have  found  that  ideal  conditions,  to  be  complete 
and  in  this  way  to  become  real,  must  transcend 
themselves.     They  have  to  pass  beyond  the  wr--'  ' 


384 


REALITY. 


of  mere  thought.  And  we  have  seen,  in  the  second 
place,  that  every  idea  must  possess  a  certain  amount 
both  of  truth  and  reaUty.  The  ideal  content  must 
appear  in  the  region  of  existence ;  and  we  have 
found  that  we  have  no  right  ever  to  regard  it  as 
unreal,  because  it  is  unable,  as  such,  to  show  itself 
and  to  occupy  a  place  there.  We  may  now  apply 
this  principle  both  to  the  capacities  of  the  soul,  and 
to  the  unseen  part  of  Nature.  The  former  cannot 
properly  exist,  and  the  latter  (so  far  as  we  saw) 
certainly  need  not  do  so.  We  may  consider  them 
each  to  be,  as  such,  incapable  of  appearance.  But 
this  admission  (we  now  have  learnt)  does  not 
weaken,  by  itself,  their  claim  to  be  real.  And  the 
amount  of  their  reality,  when  our  standard  is  applied, 
will  depend  on  their  importance,  on  the  influence 
and  bearing  which  each  of  them  possesses  in  the 
universe. 

Each  of  them  will  fall  under  the  head  of  "  poten- 
tial existence,"  and  we  may  pass  on  to  consider  the 
meaning  of  this  phrase.  The  words  "  potential," 
and  "  latent,"  and  "  nascent,"  and  we  may  add  "  vir- 
tual "  and  "  tendency."  are  employed  too  often. 
They  are  used  in  order  to  imply  that  a  certain 
thing  exists  ;  and  this,  although  either  we  ought  to 
know,  or  know,  that  the  thing  certainly  does  not 
exist.  It  would  be  hard  to  over-estimate  the  service 
rendered  by  these  terms  to  some  writers  on  philo- 
sophy. But  that  is  not  our  business  here.  Potential 
existence  means  a  set  of  conditions,  one  part  of 
which  is  present  at  a  certain  point  of  space  or  time, 
while  the  other  part  remains  ideal.  It  is  used 
generally  without  any  clear  perception  as  to  how 
much  is  wanted  in  order  to  make  these  conditions 
complete.  And  then  the  whole  is  spoken  of,  and  is 
regarded,  as  existing  at  the  point,  where  actually 
but  a  portion  of  its  factors  are  present.  Such  an 
abuse  clearly  is  indefensible. 
\"  Potential   existence  "  is  fairly  applicable  in   the 


DEGREES  OF  TRUTH  AND  REALITY. 


385 


I  following  sense.  We  may  mean  by  it  that  something 
1  somehow  appears  already  in  a  given  point  of  time, 
(although  it  does  not  as  yet  appear  fully  or  in  its 
lown  proper  character.  I  will  try  to  show  later  the 
positive  conditions  required  for  this  use,  but  it  is 
better  to  begin  by  pointing  out  where  it  is  quite 
inadmissible.  We  ought  not  to  speak  of  potential 
existence  where,  if  the  existence  were  made  actual, 
the  fact  given  now  would  he  quite  gone.  That  part  ol 
the  conditions,  which  appears  at  present,  must  pro- 
duce causally  the  rest;  and,  in  order  for  this  to  hap- 
pen, foreign  matter  must  be  added.  But,  if  so  much 
is  added  that  the  individuality  of  this  first  appear- 
ance is  wholly  destroyed,  or  is  even  overwhelmed 
and  swamped — "potential  existence"  is  inapplicable. 
Thus  the  death  of  a  man  may  result  from  the  lodg- 
ment of  a  cherry-stone  ;  but  to  speak  of  every 
cherry-stone  as,  therefore,  the  potential  death  of  a 
man,  and  to  talk  of  such  a  death  as  appearing 
already  in  any  and  every  stone,  would  surely  be 
extravagant.  For  so  large  an  amount  of  foreign 
conditions  must  contribute  to  the  result,  that,  in  the 
end,  the  condition  and  the  consequence  are  joined 
externally  by  chance.  We  may  perhaps  apprehend 
this  more  clearly  by  a  grosser  instance  of  misuse. 
A  piece  of  bread,  eaten  by  a  poet,  may  be  a  condi- 
tion required  for  the  production  of  a  lyrical  poem. 
But  would  any  one  place  such  a  poem's  existence 
already  virtually  in  each  piece  of  food,  which  may 
be  considered  likely  by  any  chance  to  make  its  way 
into  a  poet  ? 

These  absurdities  may  serve  to  suggest  the  pro- 
per employment  of  our  term.  It  is  applicable 
wherever  the  factor  present  is  considered  capable  of 
producing  the  rest  ;  and  it  must  effect  this  without 
the  entire  loss  of  its  own  existing  character.  The 
individuality,  in  other  words,  must  throughout  the 
process  be  continuous ;  and  the  end  must  very 
largely  be  due  to  the  beginning.  And  these  are 
A.  R.  c  c 


386 


REALITY. 


two  aspects  of  one  principle.  For  clearly,  if  more 
than  a  certain  amount  of  external  conditions  are 
brought  in,  the  ideal  identity  of  the  beginning  and 
of  the  end  is  destroyed.  And,  if  so,  obviously  the 
result  itself  was  not  there  at  the  first,  and  could  in 
no  rational  sense  have  already  appeared  there.  The 
ordinary  example  of  the  egg,  which  itself  later  be- 
comes a  fowl,  is  thus  a  legitimate  application  of 
potential  existence.  On  the  other  hand  to  call  every 
man,  without  distinction,  a  potential  case  of  scarlet 
fever,  would  at  least  border  on  inaccuracy.  While  to 
assert  that  he  now  is  already  such  products  as  can 
be  produced  only  by  his  own  disintegration,  would  be 
obviously  absurd.  Potential  existence  can,  in  brief, 
be  used  only  where  "development"  or  "evolution" 
retains  its  proper  meaning.  And  by  the  meaning 
of  evolution  I  do  not  understand  that  arbitrary  mis- 
use of  the  term,  which  has  been  advocated  by  a 
so-called  "System  of  Philosophy." 

Under  certain  conditions,  then,  the  idea  of  poten- 
tial being  may  be  employed.  But  I  must  add  at 
once  that  it  can  be  employed  nowhere  with  complete 
truth  and  accuracy.  For,  in  order  for  anything  to 
evolve  itself,  outer  conditions  must  come  in  ;  and  it 
is  impossible  in  the  end  to  assign  a  limit  to  the 
extent  of  this  foreign  matter.  The  genuine  cause 
always  must  be  the  whole  cause,  and  the  whole 
cause  never  could  be  complete  until  it  had  taken  in 
the  universe.'  This  is  no  mere  speculative  refine- 
ment, but  a  difiiculty  experienced  in  working  ;  and 
we  met  it  lately  while  enquiring  into  the  body  and 
soLil  (Chapter  x.xiii.).  In  strictness  you  can  never 
assert  that  a  thing  will  be,  because  of  that  which  it 
is ;  but,  where  you  cannot  assert  this,  potential 
existence  is  partly  inaccurate.  It  must  be  applied 
more  or  less  vaguely,  and  more  or  less  on  suffer- 
ance. We  are,  in  brief,  placed  between  two  dangers. 
If,  with  anything  finite,  you  refuse  wholly  to  pre- 
•  Anti  this  is  impossible.     See  Cliapters  vi.  and  xviii. 


,^ 


UjSXaaX' 


DEGREES/ OF   TRUTH    AND    REALITY. 

dicate  its  relations — relations  necessarily  in  part 
external,  and  in  part,  therefore,  variable — then  your 
account  of  this  thing  will  fall  short  and  be  empty. 
But,  otherwise,  you  will  be  affirming  of  the  thing 
that  which  only  it  may  be. 

And,  once  driven  to  enter  on  this  course,  you 
are  hurried  away  beyond  all  landmarks.  You  are 
lorced  indefinitely  to  go  on  expanding  the  subject  of 
your  predicates,  until  at  last  it  has  disappeared  into 
something  quite  different.  And  hence,  in  employ- 
ing potential  e.Kistence,  we  are,  so  to  speak,  on  an 
inclined  plane.  We  start  by  saying,  "A  is  such, 
that,  under  probable  conditions,  its  nature  will  de- 
velope  into  B ;  and  therefore,  because  of  this,  I 
venture  already  to  call  it  B."  And  we  end  by 
claiming  that,  because  A  may  possibly  be  made  to 
pass  into  another  result  C,  C  may,  therefore,  on  this 
account,  be  predicated  already.  And  we  have  to 
hold  to  this,  although  C  to  but  a  very  small  extent, 
has  been  produced  by  A.  and  although,  in  the  result, 
A  itself  may  have  totally  vanished. 

We  must  therefore  admit  that(potential  existence  ) 
implies,  to  some  extent,  a  compromise.      Its  use,  in 
fact,  cannot  be  defined  upon  a  very  strict  principle. 
Still,  by  bearing  in  mind  what  the  term  endeavours 
to  mean,  and  what  it  always  must  be   taken   more 
or  less  to  involve,  we  may,  in   practice,  succeed  in 
employing   it  conveniently  and  safely.      But   it/wiU 
remain,  in   the  end,  a  wide-spread  source  of  coTTfti-j 
sion  and   danger.     The  more  a  writer  feels  himseir  ' 
led   naturally   to  have   recourse  to  this   phrase,  the 
l>etter  cause  he  probably  has  for  at  least  attempting 
to  avoid  it. 

It  may  throw  light  on  several  problems,  it  we 
consider  further  the  general  nature  of  Possibility 
and  Chance.'     We  touched  on   this  subject  above, 

'  On    Possibility   compare  Chapter  xxvii ,    and  PrincipUi    of 
Logic,  Book  I.,  Chap.  vii. 


388 


REALITY. 


when  we  enquired  if  complete  possibility  is  the  same 
as  reality  (p.  383).  Our  answer  to  that  question 
may  be  summed  up  thus  :  Possibility  implies  the 
separation  of  thout;ht  from  existence ;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  since  these  two  extremes  are  essentially 
one.  each,  while  divided  from  the  other,  is  internally 
defective.  O^ence  if  the  possible  could  be  com- 
pleted as  such,  it  would  have  passed  into  the  real. 
But,  in  reaching  this  goal,  it  would  have  ceased 
altogether  to  be  mere  thought,  and  it  would  in  con- 
sequence, therefore,  be  no  longer  possibility/) 

The  possible  implies  always  the  partial  division 
of  idea  from  reality.  It  is,  properly,  the  conse- 
quence in  thought  from  an  ideal  antecedent.  It 
follows  from  a  set  of  conditions,  a  system  which  is 
never  complete  in  itself,  and  which  is  not  taken  to 
be  real,  as  such,  except  through  part  of  its  area. 
IJut  this  last  qualification  is  necessary.  The  pos- 
sible, itself,  is  not  real  ;  but  its  essence  partly  trans- 
cends ideas,  ahd  it  has  no  meaning  at  all  unless  it 
is  possible  really.  It  must  be  developed  from,  and 
be  relative  to,  a  real  basis.  And,  hence,  there  can 
be  no  such  thing  as  unconditional  possibility.  The 
possible,  in  other  words,  is  always  relative.  And, 
if  it  attempts  to  be  free,  it  ceases  to  be  itself. 

We  shall  understand  this,  perhaps,  better,  if  we 
recall  the  nature  of  relative  chance  (Chapter  xix.). 
Chance  is  the  given  fact  which  falls  outside  of  some 
ideal  whole  or  system.  And  ;uiy  element,  not  in- 
cluded within  such  a  universal,  is,  in  relation  to 
that  universal,  bare  fact,  and  so  relative  chance. 
63hance,  in  other  words,  would  not  be  actual  chance, 
if  it  were  not  also  more. :  It  is  viewed  in  negative 
relation  to  some  idea,  T>ut  it  could  not  exist  in 
relation  unless  in  itself  it  were  ideal  already.  And 
with  relative  possibility,  again,  we  find  a  counterpart 
implication.  The  possible  itself  would  not  be 
possible,  if  it  were  not  more,  and  if  it  were  not 
partially  real.     There   must  be  an  actual  basis  in 


DEGREES    OF    TRUTH    AND    REALITY. 


589 


which  a  part  of  its  conditions  is  realized,  though, 
by  and  in  the  possible,  this  actual  basis  need  not  be 
expressed,  but  may  be  merely  understood.  And, 
since  the  conditions  are  manifold,  and  since  the  part, 
which  is  taken  as  real,  is  largely  variable,  possibility 
varies  accordingly.  Its  way  of  completing  itself, 
and  in  particular  the  actual  basis  which  it  implies, 
are  both  capable  of  diversity.  Thus  the  possibility 
of  an  element  is  different,  according  as  it  is  under- 
stood in  these  diverse  relations.  Possibility  and 
chance,  we  may  say,  stand  to  one  another  thus. 
An  actual  fact  more  or  less  ignores  the  ideal  com- 
plement which,  within  its  own  being,  it  involves. 
And  hence,  if  you  view  it  merely  in  relation  to  some 
system  which  falls  outside  itself,  the  actual  fact  is, 
so  far.  chance.  Qlie  possible,  on  the  other  hand, 
explicitly  isolates  one  part  of  the  ideal  complement, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  implies,  more  or  less  vaguely, 
its  real  completioiy  It  fluctuates,  therefore,  with 
the  various  conditions  which  are  taken  as  neces- 
sary to  complete  it.  But  of  these  conditions 
part  must  have  actual  existence,  or  must,  as  such, 
be  real. 

And  this  account  still  holds  good,  when  we  pass 
to  the  lowest  grade  of  po.ssibility.  I  take  an  idea, 
which,  ia  the  first  place,  I  cannot  call  unmeaning. 
And  this  idea,  secondly,  I  do  not  see  to  contradict 
itself  or  the  Reality.  I  therefore  assume  that  it  has 
not  this  defect.  And,  merely  on  the  strength  of 
this,  I  go  on  to  call  such  an  idea  possible.  It  might 
seem  as  if  here  we  had  passed  from  relative  to 
unconditional  possibility  ;  but  that  view  would  be 
erroneous.  The  possible  here  is  still  a  consequence 
from  conditions,  part  of  which  is  actual.  For, 
though  of  its  special  conditions  we  know  nothing, 
we  are  not  quite  ignorant.  We  have  assumed  in  it 
more  or  less  of  the  general  character,  material  and 
formal,  which  is  owned  by  Reality.  This  character 
is   its  actual   basis  and   real  ground  of  possibility. 


)90 


REALITY. 


And,  without  this,  the  idea  would  cease  altogether 
to  be  possible. 


Wh£ 


ibili 


re  we  to  say  then  about  the  f 
about  the  chance,  which  is  bare,  and  which  is  not 
relative,  but  absolute  and  unconditional  .''  We  must 
say  of  either  that  it  presents  one  aspect  of  the  same 
fundamental  error.  Each  expresses  in  a  different 
way  the  same  main  self-contradiction  ;  and  it  may 
perhaps  be  worth  while  to  exhibit  this  in  detail. 
With  mere  possibility  the  given  want  of  all  con- 
nection with  the  Real  is  construed  into  a  ground  for 
positive  predication.  Bare  chance,  again,  gives  us 
as  a  fact,  and  gives  us  therefore  in  relation,  an 
element  which  it  still  persists  is  unrelated.  I  will 
go  on  to  explain  this  statement. 

I  have  an  idea,  and,  because  in  my  opinion  I 
know  nothing  about  it,  I  am  to  call  it  possible. 
Now,  if  the  idea  has  a  meaning,  and  is  taken  not 
to  contradict  itself,  this  (as  we  have  seen)  is.  at 
once,  a  positive  character  in  the  idea.  And  this 
gives  a  known  reason  for,  at  once  so  far,  regarding 
it  as  actual.  And  such  a  possibility,  because  in 
relation  with  an  attribute  of  the  Real,  we  have  seen, 
is  still  but  a  relative  possibility.  In  absolute  possi- 
bility we  are  supposed  to  be  without  this  knowledge. 
There,  merely  because  I  do  tiot  find  any  relation 
between  my  idea  and  the  Reality,  I  am  to  assert, 
upon  this,  that  my  idea  is  compatible.  And  the 
assertion  clearly  is  inconsistent.  Compatible  means 
that  which  in  part  is  perceived  to  be  true  ;  it  means 
that  which  internally  is  connected  with  the  Real. 
And  this  implies  assimilation,  and  it  involves  pene- 
tration of  the  element  by  some  quality  or  qualities 
of  the  Real.  If  the  element  is  compatible  it  will  be 
preserved,  though  with  a  greater  or  less  destruction 
of  its  particular  character.  But  in  bare  possibility 
I  have  perverted  the  sense  of  compatible.  Because 
I    find  absence  of  incompatibility,   because,  that  is, 


DEGREES   OF   TRUTH    AND    REALITY. 


39' 


I  am  without  a  certain  perception,  1  am  to  call  my 
idea  compatible.  On  the  ground  of  my  sheer  ignor- 
ance, in  other  words,  I  am  to  know  that  my  idea  is 
assimilated,  and  that,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent, 
it  will  survive  in  Reality.  But  such  a  position  is 
irrational. 

That  which  is  unconditionally  possible  is  viewed 
apart  from,  and  is  supposed  to  remain  undetermined 
by,  relation  to  the  Real.  There  are  no  seen  relations, 
and  therefore  none,  and  therefore  no  alien  relations 
which  can  penetrate  and  dissolve  our  supposed 
idea.  And  we  hold  to  this,  even  when  the  idea 
is  applied  to  the  Real.  But  a  relation  to  the  Real 
implies  essentially  a  relation  to  what  the  Real  pos- 
sesses, and  hence  to  have  no  relations  of  one's  own 
means  to  have  them  all  from  the  outside.  Bare 
possibility  is  therefore,  against  its  will,  one  extreme 
of  relatedness.  For  it  is  conjoined  de  facto  with 
the  Reality,  as  we  have  that  in  our  minds  ;  and, 
since  the  conjunction  is  external,  the  relatedness  is 
given  by  outer  necessity.  But  necessary  relation  of 
an  element  to  that  which  is  outside  means,  as  we 
know,  the  disruption  of  this  element  internally. 
The  merely  passible,  if  it  could  exist,  would  be, 
therefore,  for  all  we  know,  sheer  error.  For  it 
would,  so  far  as  we  know,  be  an  idea,  which,  in 
no  way  and  to  no  extent,  is  accepted  by  Reality. 
But  possibility,  in  this  sense,  has  contradicted  itself. 
Without  an  actual  basis  in,  and  without  a  positive 
connection  with.  Reality,  the  possible  is,  in  short,  not 
possible  at  all.' 

'  It  may  be  worth  while  to  notice  that  Possibility,  if  you  try  to 
make  it  unconditional,  is  the  same  thing  as  one  sense  of  Incon- 
ceivability or  Impossibility.  The  Impossible  really  is  that  which 
contradicts  positive  knowledge  (Chapter  xxvii.).  It  is  never  that 
which  you  merely  fail  to  connect  with  Reality.  But,  if  you  wrong- 
ly took  it  in  this  sense,  and,  if  you  based  it  on  mere  privation, 
it  would  unawares  have  turned  round  into  the  unconditionally 
possible.  For  that  is  actu.iUy  incompatible  with  the  Reality,  as 
de  facto  we  have  the  Reality  in  our  minds.     Each  of  these  ideas, 


392 


REALITY. 


There    is   a   like    self-contradiction    in    absolute 
chance.     The  absolutely  contingent  would  mean  a 
fact,  which  is  given  free  from  all  internal  connection 
with  its  context.      It  would  have  to  stand  without 
relation,    or    rather   with    all    its    relations    outside. 
But,  since  a  thing  must  be  determined  by  the  re- 
lations in  which  it  stands,  the  absolutely  contingent 
would  thus  be  utterly  determined  from  the  outside. 
And  so,  by  consequence,  chance  would  involve  com- 
plete internal  dissipation.      It  would  hence  implicitly 
preclude    the    given    existence    which    explicitly    it 
postulates.        Unless   chance    is    more    than    mere 
chance,  and  thus  consents  to  be  relative,  it  fails  to- 
be  itself.      Relative  chance  implies  inclusion  within, 
some    ideal    whole,   and,   on   that  basis,   asserts  an 
external  relation  to  some  other  whole.      But  chance, 
made  absolute,  has  to  affirm  a  positive  existence  in 
relation,  while  insisting  that  all  relations  fall  outside 
this  existence.     And  such  an  idea  contradicts  itself 
Or,  again,  we  may  bring  out  the  same  discrepancy 
thus.      In  the  case  of  a  given  element  we  fail  to  see 
its  connection  with  some  system.     We  do  not  per- 
ceive in  its  content  the  internal  relations  to  what  is 
beyond  it — relations  which,  because  they  are  ideals 
^re  necessary  and  eternal.       Then,  upon  the  ground 
of  this  failure,  we  go  on  to  a  denial,  and  we  insist 
that   no  such   internal   relations  are   present.      But 
every  relation,  as  we  have  learnt,  essentially  pene- 
trates  the   being  of  its  terms,  and,  in  this  sense,  is 
intrinsical  ;  or,  in  other  words,  every  relation  must 
be  a  relation  of  content.     And  hence  the  element, 
deprived  by  bare  chance  of  all   ideal   relations,    is 
unrelated  altogether.      But,  if  unrelated  and   unde- 
termined, it  is  no  longer  any  separate  element  at  all. 
It   cannot  have    the    existence   ascribed    to    it    by 
absolute  chance. 

Chance  and  possibility  may  be  called  two  different 

in  short,  is  viciously  based  on  privation,  and  each  is  a  different 
aspect  of  the  same  self-contradictor)-  comjilex. 


DEGREES   OF   TRUTH   AND    REALITY. 


393 


aspects  of  one  complex.  Relative  chance  stands  for 
something,  which  is,  but  is,  in  part,  not  connected 
and  understood.  It  is  therefore  that, which  exists, 
but,  in  part,  only  somehow.  The  relatively  possible 
is,  on  the  other  hand,  what  is  understood  incom- 
pletely, and  yet  is  taken,  more  or  less  only  somehow, 
to  be  real.  Each  is  thus  an  imperfect  way  of 
representing  reality.  Or  we  may,  if  we  please, 
repeat  the  distinction  in  another  form.  In  bare 
chance  something  is  to  be  given,  and  therefore  given 
in  a  connection  of  outer  relations  ;  and  it  yet  is 
regarded  as  not  intrinsically  related.  The  abstractly 
possible,  again,  is  the  not-related  ;  but  it  is  taken, 
at  the  same  time,  in  relation  with  reality,  and  is, 
therefore,  unawares  given  with  external  relations. 
Chance  forgets,  we  may  say,  the  essential  connec- 
tion ;  and  possibility  forgets  its  de  facto  relation  to 
the  Real,  that  is,  its  given  external  conjunction  with 
context.  Chance  belongs  to  the  world  of  existence 
and  possibility  to  thought ;  but  each  contains  at 
bottom  the  same  defect,  and  each,  against  its  will, 
when  taken  bare,  becomes  external  necessity.'  If 
the  possible  could  be  given,  it  would  be  indifferently 
chance  or  fate.  If  chance  is  thought  of,  it  is  at 
once  but  merely  possible ;  for  what  is  contingent 
has  no  complete  connection  with  Reality. 

With  this  I  will  pass  from  a  subject,  on  which  I 
have  dwelt  perhaps  too  long.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  absolute  chance,  or  as  mere  external  neces- 
sity, or  as  unconditional  possibility.  The  possible 
must,  in  part,  be  really,  and  that  means  internally, 
necessary.       And   the  same,   again,    is   true  of  the 

>  The  identity,  in  the  end,  of  possibility  with  chance,  and  of 
chance  wiih  external  or  brule  necessity,  has  instructive  conse- 
quences. It  would  obviously  give  the  proper  ground  for  an 
estimate  of  that  which  vulgarly  is  termed  Free  Will.  This  doctrine 
may  in  philosophy  be  considered  obsolete,  though  it  will  continue 
to  flourish  in  popular  Ethics.  As  soon  as  its  meaning  is  appre- 
hended, it  loses  all  plausibility.  But  the  popular  moralist  will 
always  exist  by  not  knowing  what  he  means. 


394 


REALITY. 


contingent.  Each  idea  is  relative,  and  each  lays 
stress  on  an  opposite  aspect  of  the  same  complex. 
And  hence  each,  forced  to  a  one-sided  extreme, 
disappears  altogether. 

We  are  led  from  this  to  ask  whether  there  are 
degrees  of  possibility  and  contingency,  and  our 
answer  to  this  question  must  be  afllrmative.  To  be 
more  or  less  possible,  and  to  be  more  or  less  true, 
and  intrinsically  necessary, — and,  from  the  other 
side,  to  be  less  or  more  contingent — are,  in  the  end, 
all  the  same.  And  we  may  verify  here,  in  passing, 
the  twofold  application  of  our  standard.  That 
which  is  more  possible  is  either  internally  more 
harmonious  and  inclusive ;  it  is,  in  other  words, 
nearer  to  a  complete  totality  of  content,  such  as 
would  involve  passage  into,  and  unity  with,  the  Real. 
Or  the  more  possible  is,  on  the  other  hand,  partly 
realized  in  a  larger  number  of  ideal  groups.  Every 
contact,  even  with  a  point  in  the  temporal  series, 
means  ideal  connection  with  a  concrete  group  of 
relations.  Hence  the  more  widely  possible  is  that 
which  finds  a  smaller  amount  of  content  lying  wholly 
outside  its  own  area.  It  is,  in  other  words,  the 
more  individual,  the  truer,  and  more  real.  And, 
since  it  contains  more  connections,  it  has  in  itself 
more  internal  necessity.  For  a  like  reason,  on  the 
other  side,  increase  of  contingency  means  growth  in 
falseness.  That  which,  so  far  as  it  exists,  has  more 
external  necessity — more  conjunction  from  the  out- 
side with  intelligible  systems — has,  therefore,  less 
connection  with  any.  It  is  hence  more  empty,  and, 
as  we  have  seen,  on  that  account  less  self-contained 
and  harmonious.  This  brief  account,  however  in- 
correct to  the  eye  of  common  sense,  may  perhaps, 
as  part  of  our  main  thesis,  be  found  defensible. 


It  will  throw  a  light  on  that  thesis,  if  we  end  by 
briefly    considering    the     "  ontological "    proof.      In 


DEGREES  OF  TRUTH  AND  REALITY. 


395 


Chapter  xiv.  we  were  forced  to  deal  with  this  in 
one  of  its  bearings,  and  here  we  may  attempt  to 
form  an  estimate  of  its  general  truth.  As  an  argu- 
ment, it  is  a  conclusion  drawn  from  the  presence 
of  some  thought  to  the  reality  of  that  which  the 
thoiifjht  contains.  Now  of  course  any  one  at  a 
glance  can  see  how  futile  this  might  be.  If  you 
identify  reality  with  spatial  or  even  temporal  exist- 
ence, and  understand  by  thought  the  idea  of  some 
distinct  finite  object,  nothing  seems  more  evident 
than  that  the  idea  may  be  merely  "  in  my  head." 
When,  however,  we  turn  from  this  to  consider  the 
general  nature  of  error,  then  what  seemed  so  evident 
becomes  obscure  and  presents  us  with  a  puzzle. 
For  what  is  "  in  my  head  "  must,  after  all,  be  surely 
somewhere  in  the  universe.  And  when  an  idea 
qualifies  the  universe,  how  can  it  be  excluded  from 
reality?  The  attempt  to  answer  such  a  question 
leads  to  a  distinction  between  reality  and  finite  exist- 
ence. And,  upon  this,  the  ontological  proof  may 
perhaps  seem  better  worth  examining. 

Now  a  thought  only  "  in  my  head,"  or  a  bare  idea 
separated  from  all  relation  to  the  real  world,  is  a 
false  abstraction.  For  we  have  seen  that  to  hold 
a  thought  is,  more  or  less  vaguely,  to  refer  it  to 
Reality.  And  hence  an  idea,  wholly  un-referred, 
would  be  a  self-contradiction,  This  general  result 
at  once  bears  upon  the  ontological  proof.  Evidently 
the  proof  must  start  with  an  idea  referred  to  and 
qualifying  Reality,  and  with  Reality  present  also 
and  determined  by  the  content  of  the  idea.  And 
the  principle  of  the  argument  is  sinijily  this,  that, 
standing  on  one  side  of  such  a  whole,  you  find  your- 
self moved  necessarily  towards  the  other  side. 
Mere  thought,  because  incomplete,  suggests  logically 
the  other  element  already  implied  in  it ;  and  that 
element  is  the  Reality  which  appears  in  existence. 
On  precisely  the  same  principle,  but  beginning  from 
•the  other  end,  the   "  Cosmological  "   proof  "        ^>*> 


396 


REALITY. 


said  to  argue  to  the  character  of  the  Real.  Since 
Reality  is  qualified  by  thou^'ht,  it  therefore  must 
possess  whatever  feature  thought's  essence  involves. 
And  the  principle  underlying  these  arguments — 
that,  given  one  side  of  a  connected  whole,  you  can 
go  from  this  to  the  other  sides — is  surely  irrefrag- 
able. 

The  real  failure  of  the  ontological  proof  lies  else- 
where. For  that  proof  does  not  urge  merely  that 
its  idea  must  certainly  somehow  be  real.  It  goes 
beyond  this  statement,  and  qualifies  it  by  "real  as 
such."  And  here  the  argument  seems  likely  to 
deviate  into  error.  For  a  general  principle  tliat 
every  predicate,  as  such,  is  true  of  Reality,  is  evi- 
dently false.  We  have  learnt,  on  the  contrary,  that 
truth  and  reality  are  matter  of  degree.  A  predicate, 
we  may  say,  in  no  case  is,  as  such,  really  true.  All 
will  be  subject  to  addition,  to  qualification  and  re- 
arrangement. And  truth  will  be  the  degree  up  to 
which  any  predicate,  when  made  real,  preserves  its 
own  character.  In  Chapter  xiv.,  when  dealing 
with  the  idea  of  perfection,  we  partly  saw  how  the 
ontological  argument  breaks  down.  And  the 
general  result  of  the  present  chapter  should  have 
cleared  away  difficulties.  Any  arrangement  exist- 
ing in  my  head  must  qualify  the  absolute  Reality. 
But,  when  the  false  abstraction  of  my  private  view 
is  supplemented  and  made  good,  that  arrangement 
may.  as  such,  have  completely  disappeared.  The 
ontological  proof  then  should  be  merely  another  way 
of  insisting  on  this  doctrine.  Not  every  idea  will, 
as  such,  be  real,  or,  as  such,  have  existence.  But 
the  greater  the  perfection  of  a  thought,  and  the 
more  its  possibility  and  its  internal  necessity  are 
increased,  so  much  more  reality  it  possesses. 
And  so  much  the  more  necessarily  must  it  show 
itself,  and  appear  somehow  in  existence. 

But  the  ontological  argument,  it  will  be  rightly 
said,  makes  no  pretence  of  being  applicable  to  every 


DEGREES   OF   TRUTH    AND    REALITY. 


I 


finite  matter.  It  is  used  of  the  Absolute,  and,  if 
confined  to  that,  will  be  surely  legitimate.  We  are, 
1  think,  bound  to  admit  this  claim.  The  idea  of 
the  Absolute,  as  an  idea,  is  inconsistent  with  itself; 
and  we  find  that,  to  complete  itself,  it  is  internally- 
driven  to  take  in  existence.  But  even  here  we  are 
still  compelled  to  keep  up  some  protest  against  the 
addition  of  "  as  such."  No  idea  in  the  end  can, 
strictly  as  such,  reach  reality ;  for,  as  an  idea,  it 
never  includes  the  required  totality  of  conditions. 
Reality  is  concrete,  while  the  truest  truth  must  still 
lie  more  or  less  abstract.  Or  we  may  put  the  same 
thing  otherwise  by  objecting  to  the  form  of  the 
argument.  The  separation,  postulated  in  the  pre- 
mise, is  destroyed  by  the  conclusion  ;  and  hence  the 
premise  itself  could  not  have  been  true.  This  ob- 
jection is  valid,  and  it  is  not  less  valid  because  it 
holds,  in  the  end,  of  every  possible  argument.  But 
the  objection  disappears  when  we  recognise  the 
genuine  character  of  the  process.  This  consists  in 
the  correction  by  the  Whole  of  an  attempted  isolation 
on  the  part  of  its  members.  And,  whether  you 
begin  from  the  side  of  E.\istence  or  of  Thought,  the 
process  will  remain  essentially  the  same.  There  is 
a  subject  and  a  jiredicate,  and  there  is  the  internal 
necessity,  on  each  side,  of  identity  with  the  other 
side.  But,  since  in  this  consummation  the  division 
as  such  is  transcended,  neither  the  predicate  nor 
the  subject  is  able  to  survive.  They  are  each 
preserved,  but  transmuted. 

There  is  another  point  on  which,  in  conclusion,  it 
is  well  to  insist.  If  by  reality  we  mean  existence  as 
a  presented  event,  then  to  be  real,  in  this  servse, 
marks  a  low  type  of  being.  It  needs  no  great 
advance  in  the  scale  of  reality  and  truth,  in  order  to 
make  a  thing  too  good  for  existence  such  as  this. 
And  I  will  illustrate  my  meaning  by  a  kind  of 
bastard  use  of  the  ontological  proof.'  Every  idea, 
'  Principles  of  Lo^c,  pp.  67-9. 


398 


REALirv, 


it  is  certain,  possesses  a  sensible  side  or  aspect. 
Beside  being  a  content,  it,  in  other  words,  must  be 
also  an  event.  Now  to  describe  the  various  exist- 
ences of  ideas,  as  psychical  events,  is  for  the  most 
part  a  task  falling  outside  metaphysics.*  But  the 
question  possesses  a  certain  bearing  here.  The 
existence  of  an  idea  can  be,  to  a  greater  or  to  a  less 
degree,  incongruous  with  its  content ;  and  to  predic- 
ate the  second  of  the  first  would  involve  various 
amounts  of  inconsistency.  The  thought  of  a  past 
idea,  for  example,  is  a  present  state  of  mind  ;  the 
idea  of  a  virtue  may  be  moral  vice  ;  and  the  horse, 
as  judged  to  exist,  cannot  live  in  the  same  field 
with  the  actual  horse-image.*  On  the  other  hand, 
at  least  in  most  cases,  to  think  of  anger  is,  to  how- 
ever slight  an  extent,  to  be  angry  ;  and,  usually, 
ideas  of  pleasures  and  pains  are,  as  events,  them- 
selves pleasures  and  pains  in  fact.  Wherever  the 
idea  can  be  merely  one  aspect  of  a  single  presenta- 
tion, there  we  can  say  that  the  ideal  content  exists, 
and  is  an  actual  event.  And  it  is  possible,  in  such 
cases,  to  apply  a  semblance  of  the  ontological  proof. 
Because,  that  is,  the  existence  of  the  fact  is  neces- 
sary, as  a  basis  and  as  a  condition,  for  the  idea,  we 
can  go  from  the  presence  of  the  idea  to  the  presence 
of  the  fact.  The  most  striking  instance  would  be 
supplied  by  the  idea  of  "  this  "  or  "  mine."  Immed- 
iate contact  with  Reality  can  obviously,  as  a  fact, 
never  fail  us ;  and  so,  when  we  use  the  idea  of  this 
contact,  we  take  it  always  from  the  fact  as,  in  some 
form,  that  appears.  It  is  therefore  impossible  that, 
given  the  idea,  its  existence  should  be  lacking. 

But,  when  we  consider  such  a  case   more  closely. 


'  The  question  is  one  for  psychology,  and  I  may  perhaps  be 
permitted  to  remark  that,  with  regaurd  to  abstract  ideas,  it  seems 
still  in  a  very  unsatisfactory  condition.  To  fall  back  on  Language, 
after  all,  will  not  tell  us  precisely  how  much  passes  through  the 
mind,  when  abstract  ideas  are  maile  use  of. 

*  Compare  Mind,  xxxiv.,  pp.  286-90,  and  xliii.,  pp.  313-14. 


DEGREES   OF   TRUTH    AND    REALITY.  399 

its  spuriousness  is  manifest.  For  (a),  m  the  first 
place,  the  ideal  content  is  not  moved  from  within. 
It  does  not  of  itself  seek  completion  through  e.xist- 
ence,  and  so  imply  that  by  internal  necessity.'  There 
is  no  intrinsic  connection,  there  is  but  a  mere  found 
conjunction,  between  the  two  sides  of  idea  and  exist- 
ence. And  hence  the  arfjmnent,  to  be  valid  here, 
must  be  based  on  the  mediation  of  a  third  element, 
an  element  coexisting  with,  but  of  itself  extraneous 
to,  both  sides.  But  with  this  the  essence  of  the 
ontological  argument  is  wanting.  And  (d),  in  the 
second  place,  the  case,  we  are  considering,  exhibits 
another  gross  defect.  The  idea,  which  it  predicates 
of  the  Real,  possesses  hardly  any  truth,  and  has  not 
risen  above  the  lowest  level  of  worth  and  reality. 
I  do  not  mean  merely  that  the  idea,  as  compared 
with  its  own  existence,  is  abstract,  and  so  false. 
For  that  objection,  although  valid,  is  relatively 
slight.  I  mean  that,  though  the  argument  starting 
from  the  idea  may  exhibit  existence,  it  is  not  able  to 
show  either  truth  or  reality.  It  proves  on  the  other 
hand,  contrary  to  its  wish,  a  vital  failure  in  both. 
Neither  the  subject,  nor  again  the  predicate, 
possesses  really  the  nature  assigned  to  it.  The 
subject  is  taken  as  being  merely  a  sensible  event,  and 
the  predicate  is  taken  as  one  feature  included  in  that 
fact.  And  in  each  of  these  assumptions  the  argu- 
ment is  grossly  mistaken.  For  the  genuine  subject 
is  Reality,  while  the  genuine  predicate  asserts  of 
this  every  character  contained  in  the  ostensible 
predicate  and  subject.  The  idea,  qualified  as  exist- 
ing in  a  certain  sensible  event,  is  the  predicate,  in 
other  words,  which  is  affirmed  of  the  Absolute. 
And  since  such  a  predicate  is  a  poor  abstraction, 
and  since  its  essence,  therefore,  is  determined  by 
what  falls  outside  its  own  being,  it  is,  hence,  incon- 
sistent  with  itself,  and  contradicts  its  proper  subject. 

'  So  far  as  it  did  this,  it  would  have  to  expand  itself  to  its  own 
destruction. 


/ 


400  REALITY. 

We  have  in  brief,  by  considering  the  spurious  onto- 
logical  proof,  been  led  once  more  to  the  conclusion 
that  existence  is  not  reality. 

Existence  is  not  reality,  and  reality  must  exist. 
Each  of  these  truths  is  essential  to  an  understand- 
ing of  the  whole,  and  each  of  them,  necessarily  in 
>  the  end,  is  implied  in  the  other.  Existence  is,  in 
other  words,  a  form  of  the  appearance  of  the  Real. 
And  we  have  seen  that  to  appear,  as  such,  in  one 
or  in  many  events,  is  to  show  therefore  a  limited 
and  low  type  of  development.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  not  to  appear  at  all  in  the  series  of  time,  not 
to  exhibit  one's  nature  in  the  field  of  existence,  is 
to  be  false  and  unreal.  And  to  be  more  true,  and 
to  be  more  real,  is,  in  some  way  or  other,  to  be 
more  manifest  outwardly.  For  the  truer  always  is 
wider.  There  is  a  fair  presumption  that  any  truth, 
which  cannot  be  exhibited  at  work,  is  for  the  most 
part  untrue.  And,  with  this  understanding,  we  may 
take  our  leave  of  the  ontological  proof.  Our  in- 
spection of  it,  perhaps,  has  served  to  confirm  us  in 
the  general  doctrine  arrived  at  in  our  chapter.  It 
is  only  a  view  which  asserts  degrees  of  reality  and 
truth,  and  which  has  a  rational  meaning  for  words 
such  as  "  higher  "  and  "  lower  " — it  is  only  such  a 
view  which  can  do  justice  alike  to  the  sides  of  idea 
.pjid  existence. 


CHAPTER    XXV. 


GOODNESS. 


In  a  former  chapter  I  tried  to  show,  briefly,  that  the 
existence  of  evil  affords  no  good  ground  for  an 
objection  against  our  Absolute.  Evil  and  good  are 
not  illusions,  but  they  are  most  certainly  appear- 
ances. They  are  one-sided  aspects,  each  over-ruled 
and  transmuted  in  the  Whole.  And,  after  the  dis- 
cussions of  our  last  chapter,  we  should  be  better 
able  to  appreciate  their  position  and  value.  As 
with  trutli  and  error,  so  with  good  and  bad,  the 
opposition  is  not  absolute,  For,  to  some  e.xtent 
and  in  some  manner,  perfection  is  everywhere 
realized.  And  yet,  upon  the  other  hand,  the 
distinction  of  degrees  is  no  less  vital.  The  interval 
which  exists  between,  and  which  separates,  the 
lower  and  the  higher,  is  measured  by  the  idea  of 
perfect  Reality.  The  lower  is  that  which,  to  be 
made  complete,  would  have  to  undergo  a  more  total 
transformation  of  its  nature.  And  viewed  from  the 
ground  of  what  is  higher — of  what  they  fail  to  reacii 
or  even  oppose — the  lower  truth  and  lower  good- 
ness become  siieer  error  and  evil.  The  Absolute  is 
perfect  in  all  its  detail,  it  is  equally  true  and  good 
throughout.  But,  upon  the  other  side,  each  dis- 
tinction of  better  and  more  true,  every  degree  and 
each  comparative  stage  of  reality  is  essential.  They 
are  made  and  justified  by  the  all-pervasive  action 
of  one  immanent  perfection. 

And  guided  by  this  twofold  principle  we  m'"'if 
approach  without  misgiving  the  diverse  wor 

A.  R.  «»«  D  D 


402 


REALITY. 


appearance.  But  in  this  work  I  am  endeavouring 
merely  to  defend  a  general  view.  And  so,  both  on 
the  whole  and  here  in  particular  with  regard  to 
goodness,  I  cannot  attempt  to  deal  fully  with  any 
aspect  of  the  Absolute.  It  is  mainly  the  common 
prejudice  in  favour  of  the  ultimate  truth  of  morality 
or  religion,  that  has  led  me  to  give  to  them  here  a 
space  which  perhaps  is  undue.  liut,  even  with  this, 
I  can  but  touch  on  certain  features  of  the  subject ; 
and  I  must  deal  chiefly  with  those  which  are  likely 
to  be  urged  as  objections  to  our  doctrine.*     j_ 

We  may  speak  of  the  good,  generally,  as  that 
which  satisfies  desire.  It  is  that  which  we  approve 
of,  and  in  which  we  can  rest  with  a  feeling  of  con- 
tentment. Or  we  may  describe  it  again,  if  we 
please,  as  being  the  same  as  worth.  It  contains 
those  elements  which,  also,  we  find  in  truth.  Truth 
and  goodness  are  each  the  correspondence,  or  rather 
jeach  the  identity,  of  idea  and  existence.  In  truth 
we  start  with  e.Kistence,  as  being  the  appearance  of 
perfection,  and  we  go  on  to  complete  ideally  what 
really  must  be  there.  In  goodness,  on  the  other 
hand.we  begin  with  an  idea  of  what  is  perfect,  and 
we  then  make,  or  else  find,  this  same  idea  in  what 
exists.  .  And  the  idea  also  I  take  to  be  desired. 
Goodness  is  the  verification  in  existence  of  a  desired 
ideal  content,  and  it  thus  implies  the  measurement 
of  fact  by  a  suggested  idea.  Hence  both^[oodness 
and  truth  contain  the  separation  of  idea -ajid  exist- 
"ence,  and  involve  a  process  in  time.     And,  there- 


• 


'  My  Ethical  Studies,  1876,  a  book  which  in  the  main  still 
expresses  my  opinions,  contains  a  further  discussion  on  many 
points.  For  my  views  on  the  nature  of  pleasure,  desire,  and  voli- 
tion, I  must  refer  to  Mind,  No.  49.  My  former  volume  would 
have  been  reprinted,  had  I  not  desired  to  rewrite  it.  But  I  feel 
that  the  appearance  of  other  books,  as  well  as  the  decay  of  those 
superstitions  against  which  largely  it  was  directed,  has  left  me 
free  to  consult  my  own  pleasure  in  this  matter. 


fore,  each  is  appearance,  and  but  a  one-sided  aspect 
of  the  Real.'  • 

But  the  good  (it  may  be  objected)  need  involve 
no  idea.  Is  not  the  pleasant,  as  such,  good  ?  Is  , 
not  at  any  rate  any  feelinor,  in  which  we  rest  with 
satisfaction,  at  once  good  in  itself?  I  answer  these '\JJ 
questions  in  the  negative.  Good,  in  the  proper  ^ 
sense,  implies  the  fulfilment  of  desire :  at  least, ^^Sj 
if  you  consider  anything  apart  from  the  realization 
of  a  suggested  idea,  it  is  at  a  stage  below  goodness. 
Such  an  experience  would  be.  but  it  would  not, 
properly,  have  yet  become  either  good  or  true. 
And  on  reflection,  perhaps,  we  should  not  wish  to 
make  use  of  these  terms.  For,  at  our  level  of 
mental  life,  whatever  satisfies  and  contents  us  can 
hardiy  fail  to  have  some  implication  with  desire. 
And,  if  we  take  it  where  as  yet  it  suggests  nothing, 
where  we  have  no  idea  of  what  we  feel,  and  where 
we  do  not  realize,  however  dimly,  that  "  it  is  this 
which  is  good  " — then  it  is  no  paradox  to  refuse  to 
such  a  stage  the  name  of  goodness.  Such  a  feeling 
would  become  good,  if  for  a  moment  I  were  so  to 
regard  it ;  for  I  then  should  possess  the  idea  of 
what  satisfies,  and  should  find  that  idea  given  also 
in  fact.  But,  where  ideas  are  absent,  we  should 
not  speak  of  anything  as  being  actually  good  or 
true.  Goqdness^and  truth  may  be  there  potentially, 
but  as  yet  neither  of  them  ii  there! 

And  that  an  idea  is  required  Tor  goodness  seems 
fairly  clear,  but  with  regard  to  desire  there  is  more 
room  for  doubt.  I  may  approve,  in  the  sisnse  of 
finding  a  pleasant  idea  realized,  and  yet,  in  some 
cases,  desire  appears  to  be  absent.  For,  in  some 
cases,  existence  does  not  oppose  my  idea,  and  there 


'  In  the  main,  what  is  true  is  good,  because  the  good  has  to 
satisfy  desire,  and,  on  the  whole,  we  necessarily  desire  to  find  the 
more  perfect.  What  is  good  is  true,  in  the  main,  because  the 
idea  desired,  being,  in  general,  more  perfect,  is  more  re.il.  But 
on  the  relation  of  these  aspects  further  see  (he  next  chapter. 


404 


REALITY. 


\ 


is,  hence,  no  place  open  for  the  tension  of  desire. 
This  assertion  might  be  combated,  but,  for  myself, 
I  am  prepared  to  admit  it.  And  the  inclusion  of 
desire  in  the  idea  of  good,  to  this  extent  I  allow, 
may  be  called  arbitrary.  But  it  seems  justifiable, 
because  (as  things  are)  desire  must  be  developed. 
Approval  without  desire  is  but  an  e.\treme  and  a 
passing  condition.  There  cannot  fail  to  come  a 
wavering,  and  so  an  opposition,  in  my  state  ;  and, 
with  this  at  once,  we  have  the  tension  required  for 
desire.  Desire,  I  thus  admit,  may,  for  the  moment, 
be  absent  from  approval  ;  but,  because  it  necessarily 
must  ensue,  I  take  it  as  essential.  Still  this  point, 
in  my  opinion,  has  little  importance.  What  is  im- 
portant is  to  insist  that  the  presence  of  an  idea  is 
essential  to  goodness. 

And  for  this  reason  we  must  not  admit  tliat  the 
pleasant,  as  such,  is  good.  The  good  is  pleasant, 
and  the  better,  also,  is  in  proportion  more  pleasant. 
-  ,  And  we  may  add,  again,  that  the  pleasant  is  gener- 
J\  ally  good,  if  we  will  leave  out  "as  such."  For  the 
pleasant  will  naturally  become  desired,  and  will 
therefore  on  the  whole  be  good.  But  we  must  not 
assert  that  everything  pleasant  is  the  satisfaction 
of  a  desire,  or  even  always  must  imply  desire  or 
approval.  And  hence,  since  an  idea  may  be  absent,^ 
the  pleasant  sometimes  may  be  not  properly  good.     \ 

And  against  the  identification  of  bare  pleasure, 
as  such,  with  the  good  we  may  unhesitatingly  pro- 
nounce. Such  a  view  separates  the  aspect  of 
pleasure,  and  then  denies  that  anything  else  in  the 
world  is  worth  anything  at  all.  If  it  merely  asserted 
tliat  the  more  pleasant  and  the  better  were  one,  its 
position  would  be  altered.  F"or,  since  pleasure  goes 
with  everything  that  is  free  from  discord,  or  has 
merged  discord  in  fuller  harmony,  naturally  the 
higher  degree  of  individuality  will  be  therefore  more 
p'eHsant."  And  we  have  included  pleasure  as  an 
'  1  Uiust  jcfer  here  lo  Mi»J,  No.  49. 


GOODNESS.  405 

essential  element  in  our  idea  of  perfection  (Chapter 
XX.).  But  it  will  hardly  follow  from  this  that 
nothinjT  in  the  universe  except  pleasure  is  good,  and 
that,  taking  this  one  aspect  as  the  end,  we  may 
regard  all  else  as  mere  means.  Where  everything 
is  connected  in  one  whole,  you  may  abstract  and 
so  may  isolate  any  one  factor.  And  you  may  prove 
at  your  ease  that,  without  this,  all  the  rest  are  im- 
perfect and  worthless  ;  and  you  may  show  how,  this 
one  being  added,  they  all  once  more  gain  reality 
and  worth.  And  hence  of  every  one  alike  you  may 
conclude  that  it  is  the  end  for  the  sake  of  which  all 
the  others  exist.  But  from  this  to  argue,  absolutely 
and  blindly,  that  some  one  single  aspect  of  the 
world  is  the  sole  thing  that  is  good,  is  most  surely 
illogical.  It  is  to  narrow  a  point  of  view,  which 
is  permissible  only  so  long  as  it  is  general,  into  a 
one-sided  mistake.  And  thus,  in  its  denial  that 
anything  else  beside  pleasure  is  good,  Hedonism 
must  be  met  by  a  decided  rejection. 

Is  a  thing  desired  always,  because  it  is  first 
pleasant,  or  is  it  ever  pleasant  rather,  on  the  other 
hnnd,  because  we  desire  it  .'' '  And  we  may  ask 
the  same  question  as  to  the  relation  of  the  desired 
to  the  good.  But,  again,  is  anything  true  because 
I  am  led  to  think  it,  or  am  I  rather  led  to  think  it 
because  of  its  truth  .'  And,  once  more,  is  it  right 
because  /  ought,  or  does  the  "  because  "  only  hold 
in  the  opposite  direction  .'*     And  is  an  object  beauti- 

'  The  object  of  any  ide.i  lias  a  tendency  lo  become  desired,  if 
held  over  against  fact,  although,  beforehand  and  otherwise,  it  has 
not  been,  and  is  not  pleasant.  Every  idea,  as  the  enlargement  of 
self,  is,  in  the  abstract  and  so  far,  pleasant.  And  the  pleasant- 
ness of  an  idea,  as  my  psychical  state,  can  be  transferred  to  its 
object.  We  have  to  .isk  always  what  it  is  that  fixes  an  idea 
against  fact.  Is  it  there  because  its  object  has  been  pleasant,  or 
because  it,  or  its  object,  is  now  pleasant?  And  can  we  not  say 
sometimes  that  it  is  pleasiint  only  because  it  is  there?  The  dis- 
cussion of  these  matters  would  lead  to  psychological  subtleties, 
which  here  we  may  neglect. 


I 


4o6 


REALITY. 


ful  because  it  affects  me,  or  is,  on  the  other  hand, 
my  emotion  the  result  of  its  beauty  ?  In  each  of 
these  cases  we  first  have  made  a  separation  which 
is  too  rigid,  and  on  this  foundation  are  built  ques 
lions  which  tlireaten  us  with  a  dilemma.  We  set 
down  upon  each  side,  as  a  fact  and  as  presupposed, 
what  apart  from  the  other  side,  at  least  sometimes, 
would  have  no  existence.  If  good  is  the  satisfaction 
of  desire,  you  may  take  desire  as  being  its  con- 
dition ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  you  would  desire 
hardly  anything  at  all,  unless  in  some  sense  it  had 
given  satisfaction  already.  Certainly  the  pleasant, 
as  we  have  seen,  may,  for  a  time  and  at  a  low  level, 
be  not  approved  of  or  desired.  But  it  is  another 
thing  to  assert  that  goodness  consists  in,  or  is  a 
mere  result  from,  pleasure. 

That  which  consistent  Hedonism  would,  at  least 
by  implication,  deny,  is  the  direction  of  desire  in  the 
end  towards  anything  but  pleasure.  Something  is 
pleasant  as  a  fact,  and  solely  for  that  cause  it  is 
desired  ;  and  with  this  the  whole  question  seems 
forthwith  settled.  But  pleasure  itself,  like  every 
other  fact,  cannot  be  something  which  just  happens. 
Upon  its  side  also,  assuredly,  it  is  not  without  a 
reason.  And.  when  we  ask,  we  find  that  pleasure 
CO- exists  always  with  what  we  call  perfection  or 
individuality.  But,  if  so,  then  surely  the  "because" 
holds  as  firmly  in  one  way  as  in  the  other.  And, 
so  far  as  I  see,  if  we  have  a  right  to  deny  that  a 
certain  character  is  necessary  for  pleasure,  we  should 
have  the  same  right  to  repudiate  the  connection  be- 
tween pleasure  and  desire.  If  the  one  co-existence 
is  mere  accident  and  a  conjunction  which  happens, 
then  why  not  also,  and  as  much,  the  other  .■*  But, 
if  we  aj^ree  that  the  connection  is  two-sided,  and 
that  a  degree  of  relative  perfection  is  essential  to 
pleasure,  just  as  pleasure,  on  its  side,  is  an  element 
in  perfection,  then  Hedonism,  at  once,  is  in  principle 
refuted.     The    object  of  desire  will   never  fail,  as 


GOODNESS. 


407 


such,  to  contain  more  than  pleasure ;  and  the  idea 
that  either  pleasure,  or  any  other  aspect,  is  the 
single  End  in  the  universe  must  be  allowed  to  be 
untenable  (Chapter  xxvi.).  I  may  perhaps  put  tliis 
otherwise  by  urging  that,  even  if  Hedonism  tvere 
true,  there  would  be  no  possible  way  in  which  its 
truth  could  be  shown.^ 


Passing  from  this  mistake  I  will  notice  another 
doctrine  from  which  we  must  dissent.  There  is  a 
temptation  to  identify  goodness  with  the  realization 
of  the  Will;  and,  on  the  strength  of  a  certain  assump- 
tion, this  conclusion  would,  taken  broadly,  be  right. 
But  we  shall  see  that  this  assumption  is  not  tenable 
(Chapter  xxvi.).  and,  without  it.  the  conclusion 
cannot  stand.  We  have  noticed  that  the  satisfac- 
tion of  desire  can  be  found  as  well  as  tnade  by  the 
individual.  And  where  experienced  existence  is 
both  pleasant  and  satisfies  desire,  I  am  unable  to 
see  how  we  can  refuse  to  call  it  good.  Nor,  again, 
can  pleasure  be  limited  so  as  to  be  the  feeling  of  the 
satisfied  will,  since  it  clearly  seems  to  exist  in  the 
absence  of  volition. - 

1  may  perhaps  e.vpress  our  general  view  by  say- 
ing that  tlie  good  is  co-extensive  with  approbation. 
But  I  should  add  that  approbation  is  to  be  taken  in 

'  I  have  noticed  above  (p.  374)  the  want  of  thoroughness 
disijtayed  by  Hedonism  in  its  attitude  towards  the  intellect.  See 
more  below,  p.  434.  For  further  criticism  of  details  I  may  refer  to 
my  Ethical  Studies,  and  again  to  a  pamphlet  that  was  called  Afr. 
Stdgjvick's  Hedonism.     Cp.  Mind,  49,  p.  36. 

*  I  may  add  that  in  time  it  precedes  the  development  of  will. 
Will  and  thought,  proper,  imply  the  distinction  of  subject  from 
object,  and  pain  and  pleasure  seem  prior  to  this  distinction,  and 
indeed  largely  to  effect  it.  I  may  emphasize  my  dissent  from 
certain  views  as  to  the  dependence  of  pleasure  on  the  Will,  or  the 
Self,  or  the  Ego,  by  staling  that  I  consider  these  to  be  products 
and  subsequent  to  pleasure.  To  say  that  ihey  are  made  solely 
by  pleasure  and  pain  would  be  incorrect.  But  it  would  be  much 
more  correct  than  to  lake  the  latter  always  as  being  a  reaction 
from  them. 


4o8 


REALITY. 


its  widest  sense.  To  approve  is  to  have  an  idea  in 
which  we  feel  satisfaction,  and  to  have  or  imagine  the 
presence  of  this  idea  in  existence.  And  against  the 
existence  which,  actually  or  in  imagination,  fails  to 
realize  the  idea,  the  idea  becomes  an  ''  is  to  be,"  a 
"should"  or  an  "ought."  Nor  is  approbation  in 
the  least  confined  to  the  realm  of  morality  proper, 
but  is  found  just  as  much  in  the  worlds  of  specula- 
tion or  art.  Wherever  a  result,  external  or  inward, 
is  measured  by  an  idea  which  is  pleasant,  and  is 
seen  to  correspond,  we  can,  in  a  certain  sense,  be 
said  to  approve  And.  where  we  approve,  there 
certainly  we  can  be  said  also  to  find  the  result 
good.' 

The  good,  in  general,  is  often  identified  with  the 
desirable.  This,  I  think,  is  misleading.  For  the 
desirable  means  that  which  is  to  be,  or  ought  to  be, 
desired.     And  it  seem'S,  hence,  to  imply  that  the  good 

'  For  the  sake  of  convenience  I  assume  that  approval  implies 
desire,  but  in  certain  cases  the  assumption  would  hardly  be  cor- 
rect (p.  404).  But  approval  aKv.iys  must  imply  that  the  idea  is 
pleasant.  Apart  from,  or  in  abstraction  from,  lh.it  feature,  we 
should  have  mere  recognition.  .\nd,  though  recognition  tends 
always  to  become  approval,  yet  in  idea  they  arc  not  the  same  ; 
and  again  in  fact  recognition,  I  think,  is  possible  where  approval 
is  absent. 

We  approve,  of  course,  not  always  absolutely,  but  from  some 
one  point  of  view.  Even  where  the  result  is  most  unwelcome  we 
may  still  approve  theoretically ;  and  to  find  what  we  are  looking 
for,  however  bad,  is  an  intellectual  success,  and  may,  so  far,  be 
approved  of  It  will  then  be  good,  so  far  as  it  is  regarded  solely 
from  this  one  aspect.  The  real  objection  against  making  approval 
co-extensive  with  goodness  is  that  a])proval  implies  usually  a 
certain  degree  of  reflection,  and  suggests  the  judging  from  an 
abstracted  and  imjiersonal  point  of  view.  In  this  way  approba- 
tion may  be  found,  for  instance,  to  be,  so  far,  incomjiatible  with 
love,  and  so  also  with  some  goodness.  But  if  approbation  is 
taken  at  a  low  level  of  development,  and  is  used  to  mean  no 
more  than  the  finding  anything  to  be  that  which  gives  satisfaction, 
the  objection  disappears.  The  relation  of  practical  to  theo- 
retical approval  will  be  toucjied  on  further  in  Chapter  xxvi. 
Approval,  of  course,  is  practical  where  the  idea  is  of  something 
10  be  done. 


GOODNESS. 


409 


might  be  g^ood,  and  yet  not  be  desired,  or,  again, 
that  something  might  be  desired  which  is  not  good. 
And,  if  good  is  taken  generally,  these  assertions 
at  least  are  disputable.  The  term  "desirable" 
belongs  to  the  world  of  relative  goods,  and  has  a 
clear  meaning  only  where  we  can  speak  of  better 
and  worse.  But  to  good  in  general  it  seems  not 
strictly  applicable.  A  thing  is  desirable,  when  to 
desire  it  is  better.  It  is  not  desirable,  properly, 
when  you  can  say  no  more  than  that  to  desire  it  is 
good.' 

The  good  might  be  called  desirable  in  the  .sense 
that  it  essentially  has  to  be  desired.  For  desire  is 
not  an  external  means,  but  is  contained  and  involved 
in  goodness,  or  at  least  follows  from  it  necessarily. 
Goodness  without  desire,  we  might  say,  would  not 
be  itself,  and  it  is  hence  desirable  (p.  404).  This 
use  of  "  desirable  "  would  call  attention  to  an  im- 
portant point,  but,  for  the  reason  given  above,  would 
be  misleading.  At  any  rate  it  clearly  separates  for 
the  moment  desire  from  goodness. 

We  have  attempted  now  to  fi.x  generally  the 
meaning  of  goodness,  and  we  may  proceed  from 
this  to  lay  stress  on  its  contradictory  character. 
The  good  is  not  the  perfect,  but  is  merely  a  one- 
sided aspect  of  perfection.  It  tends  to  pass  beyond 
itself,  and,  if  it  were  completed,  it  would  forthwith 
cease  properly  to  be  good.  I  will  exhibit  its 
incompleteness  first  by  asking  what  it  is  that  is 
good,  and  will  then  go  on  briefly  to  point  out  the 
self-contradiction  in  its  essence. 

'  If  pleasure  were  the  only  thing  that  could  be  desired,  it 
would,  hence,  not  foUow  straight  from  this  that  pleasure  is  de- 
sirable at  all,  or  that,  further,  it  is  the  sole  desirable.  These 
conclusions  might  follow,  but  in  any  case  not  directly  ;  and  the 
intermediate  steps  should  be  set  out  and  discussed.  The  word 
"desirable"  naturally  lends  itself  to  misuse,  and  has  on  this 
account  been  of  service  to  some  Hedonistic  writers.  It  veils  a 
covert  transition  from  "is"  to  "  is  to  be." 


I 


4IO 


REALITY. 


<5^ 


If  we  seek  to  know  what  is  goodness,  we  find 
it  always  as  the  adjective  of  something  not  itself, 
lieauty,  truth,  pleasure,  and  sensation  are  all  things 
that  are  good.  We  desire  them  all,  and  all  can 
serve  as  types  or  "  norms  "  by  which  to  guide  our 
approbation.  And  hence,  in  a  sense,  they  all  will  fall 
under  and  be  included  in  goodness.  But  when  we 
ask,  on  the  other  hand,  if  goodness  exhausts  all  that 
lies  in  these  regions,  the  answer  must  be  different. 
Por  we  see  at  once  that  each  possesses  a  character  of 
its  own  ;  and,  in  order  to  be  good,  the  other  aspects 
of  the  universe  must  also  be  themselves  The  good 
then,  as  such,  is  obviously  not  so  wide  as  the  totality 
of  things.  And  the  same  conclusion  is  at  once 
forced  on  us,  if  we  go  on  to  examine  the  essence  of 
goodness.  For  that  is  self-discrepant,  and  is  there- 
fore appearance  and  not  Reality.  The  good  implies 
a  distinction  of  idea  from  existence,  and  a  division 
which,  in  the  lapse  of  time,  is  perpetually  healed  up 
and  re  made. 

And  such  a  process  is  involved  in  the  inmost 
being  of  the  good.  A  satisfied  desire  is,  in  short, 
inconsistent  with  itself  For,  so  far  as  it  is  quite 
satisfied,  it  is  not  a  desire  ;  and,  so  far  as  it  is  a 
desire,  it  must  remain  at  least  pardy  unsatisfied. 
And  where  we  are  said  to  want  nothing  but  what 
we  have,  and  where  approbation  precludes  desire, 
we  have,  first,  an  ideal  continuance  of  character 
in  conflict  with  change.  But  in  any  case,  apart 
from  this,  there  is  implied  the  suggestion  of  an 
idea,  distinct  from  the  fact  while  identified  with  it. 
Each  of  tliese  features  is  necessary,  and  each  is 
inconsistent  with  the  other.  And  the  resolution 
of  this  difference  between  idea  and  e.xistence  is 
both  demanded  by  the  good,  and  yet  remains 
unattainable.  Its  accomplishment,  indeed,  would 
destroy  the  proper  essence  of  goodness,  and  the 
good  is  therefore  in  itself  incomplete  and  self- 
transcendent.     It    moves   towards  an  other  and   a 


GOODNKSS. 


411 


higher    character,    in_jviiich,_JiecQaiiog- perfeclt^jt  <^^ 

wou[d__b.e  jrijecged.  -*  v"  ^  r 

iTeiice  obviously  the  good  is  not  tlie  Whole,  and'  "*  \^>^ 
the  Whole,  as  such,  is  not  good.  And,  viewed  thus  '^^^^-  * 
in  relation  to  the  Absolute,  there  is  nothing  either 
bad  or  good,  there  is  not  anything  better  or  worse.  '  — 
For  the  Absolute  is  tioi  its  _a4jpearances^  But  (as^f  T^^ 
Iwe  have  seen  throughout)  such  a  truth  is  itself  par-  v^  y 
jtial  and  false,  since  the  Absolute  appears  in  its  ^  .  i'^nI 
|3lienomena  and  is  real  nowhere  outside  them^_  We^Ni^ 
indeed  can  only  deny  that  it  Is^any  one,  because  it 
is  all  of  them  in  unity.  And  so,  regarded  from  this 
other  side,  the  Absolute  is  good,  and  it  manifests 
itself  throughout  in  various  degrees  of  goodness  ^ 
and  badness.  The  destiny  of  goodness,  in  reaching'*  ^_ 
which  it  must  itself  cease  to  be,  is  accomplished  by  ^^ 
the  Whole.  Andj_jinceJn_that_Cpnsummation  idea  .  "N*  « 
and  existence  are  not  lost  but  are  brought  into  "*■->  ^^*' 
Tvarmony.  the  Whole  therefore  is  still  good.  And^2^^  ^ 
again,  since  reference  to  the  perfect  makes  finite 
satisfactions  all  higher  and  lower,  the  Absolute  is 
realized  in  all  of  them  to  different  degrees.  I  will 
briefly  deal  with  this  latter  point. 

We  saw,  in  our  last  chapter,  the  genuine  meaning 
of  degrees  in  reality  and  truth.  That  is  more  per- 
fect which  is  separated  from  perfection  by  a  smaller 
interval.  And  the  interval  is  measured  by  the 
amount  of  re-arrangement  and  of  addition  required 
in  order  to  turn  an  appearance  into  Reality.  We 
found,  again,  that  our  one  principle  has  a  double 
aspect,  as  it  meets  two  opposite  defects  in  phen- 
omena. For  an  element  is  lower  as  being  either 
more  narrow  or  less  harmonious.  And  we  per- 
ceived, further,  how  and  why  these  two  defects  are 
essentially  connected.  Passing  now  to  goodness, 
we  must  content  ourselves  by  observing  in  general 
that  the  same  principle  holds.  The  satisfaction, 
which  is  more  true  and  more  real,  is  better.  And 
we  measure,  here  again,   by  the   double  aspect  of, 


412 


REALITY. 


extension  and  harmony.'  Only  the  perfect  and 
complete  would,  in  the  end,  content  our  desires. 
And  a  satisfaction  more  consistent  with  itself,  or 
again  wider  and  fuller,  approaches  more  nearly  to 
that  consummation  in  which  we  could  rest.  Further 
the  divergence  of  these  two  aspects  is  itself  but 
apparent,  and  consists  merely  in  a  one-sided 
confinement  of  our  view.  For  a  satisfaction  de- 
termined from  the  outside  cannot  internally  be 
iiarmonious,  while  on  the  other  hand,  if  it  became 
all-inclusive,  it  would  have  become  also  concordant. 
In  its  application  this  single  principle  tends  natur- 
ally to  fall  apart  into  two  different  standards.  Still, 
for  all  that,  it  remains  in  essence  and  at  bottom  the 
same,  and  it  is  everywhere  an  estimation  by  the 
Absolute. 

In  a  sense,  therefore,  the  Absolute  is  actually 
good,  and  throughout  the  world  of  goodness  it  is 
truly  realized  in  different  degrees  of  satisfaction. 
•Since  in  ultimate  Reality  all  existence,  and  all 
thought  and  feeling,  become  one,  we  may  even  .say 
that  every  feature  in  the  universe  is  thus  absolutely 
good. 

I  have  now  briefly  laid  down  the  general  mean- 
ing and  significance  of  goodness,  and  may  go  on  to 
consider  it  in  a  more  special  and  restricted  sense. 
The  good,  we  have  seen,  contains  the  sides  of  ex- 
istence and  idea.  And  the  existence,  .so  far,  has 
been  found  to  be  in  accordance  with  the  idea,  but 
the  idea  itself,  .so  far,  has  not  necessarily  produced 
or  realized  itself  in  the  fact.  When,  however,  we 
take  goodness  in  its  narrower  meaning,  this  last 
feature  is  essential.  The  good,  in  short,  will  be- 
come the  realized  end  or  completed  will.  It  is 
now  an  idea  which  not  only  has  an  answering  con- 

•  In  estimating  pains  and  pleasures  we  consider  not  merely 
their  degree  and  extent,  but  also  tlieir  effect-s,  and  generally  all 
those  qualities  with  which  tliey  are  inseparably  connected. 


GOODNESS.  413 

tent  in  fact,  but,  in  addition  also,  has  made,  and  has 
brought  about,  that  correspondence.  We  may  say 
that  the  idea  has  translated  or  has  carried  itself  out 
into  reality  ;  for  the  content  on  both  sides  is  the 
same,  and  the  existence  has  become  what  it  is 
through  the  action  of  the  idea.     Goodness  thus  will 

I  be  confmed  to  the  realm  of  ends  onyfrelf-TeaHzasr 
Horrr    It  will  be  restricted,  in  other  words,  to  what 
"^  commonly  called  the  sphere  of  morality. 

For  we  must  here  take  self-realization  to  have  no 
meaning  except  in  finite  souls  ;  and  of  course  every 
soul  is  finite,  though  certainly  not  all  are  human. 
Will,  implying  a  process  in  time,  cannot  belong,  as 
such,  to  the  Absolute  ;  and.  on  the  other  side,  we 
cannot  assume  the  existence  of  ends  in  the  physical 
world.  I  shall  return  in  the  next  chapter  to  this 
question  of  teleology  in  Nature,  but.  for  the  sake  of 
convenience,  we  must  here  exclude  it  from  our  view. 
Xhere  is  Jo  bcrin.  short,  no-self-realization  except 
that  of  souls. 

Goodness  then,  at  present,  is  the  realization  of  its 
idea  by  a  finite  soul.  It  is  not  perfection  simply, 
but  perfection  as  carried  out  by  a  will.  We  must 
forget,  on  the  one  hand,  that,  as  we  have  seen, 
approbation  goes  beyond  morality ;  and  we  must,  as 
yet,  be  blind  to  tliat  more  restricted  sense  in  which 
morality  is  inward.  Goodness  is.  here,  to  be  the 
carrying  out  by  the  individual  of  his  idea  of  perfec- 
tion. And  we  must  go  on  to  show  brielly  how.  in 
this  sense  also,  the  good  is  inconsistent.  It  is  a 
point  of  view  which  is  compelled  perpetually  to  pass 
beyond  itself. 

If  we  enquire,  once  more,  "  What  is  good  .■' "  in  the 
sense  of  asking  for  some  element  of  content  which 
is  special,  we  must  answer,  as  before.  "  There  is 
nothing."  Pleasure,  we  have  seen,  is  by  itself  not 
the  essence  of  goodness  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
no  feature  of  the  world  falls  outside  of  what  is  good. 
Beauty,  truth,  feeling,  and  sensation,  every  imagin- 


4'4 


REALITY. 


able  matter  must  go  to  constitute  perfection.  For 
perfection  or  individuality  is  a  system,  harmonious 
and  thus  inclusive  of  everything.  And  goodness 
we  have  now  taken  to  be  the  willed  reality  of  its 
perfection  by  a  soul.  And  hence  neither  the  form 
of  system  by  itself,  nor  again,  any  one  matter  apart 
from  the  whole,  is  either  perfect  or  good.' 

But,  as  with  truth  and  reality,  so  with  goodness 
our  one  standard  becomes  double,  and  individuality 
falls  apart  into  the  aspects  of  harmony  and  extent. 
In  principle,  and  actually  in  the  end,  these  two  fea- 
tures must  coincide  (Chapter  .xxiv.)  ;  but  in  judging 
of  phenomena  we  are  constantly  forced  to  apply 
them  separately.  1  propose  to  say  nothing  about 
the  various  concrete  modes  in  which  this  two-fold 
perfection  has  been  realized  in  fact.  But,  solely 
with  a  view  to  bring  out  the  radical  vice  of  all  good- 
ness, I  will  proceed  to  lay  stress  on  this  divergence 
in  application.  The  aspects  of  extent  and  of  har- 
mony come  together  in  the  end,  but  no  less  certainly 
in  that  end  goodness,  as  such,  will  have  perished. 

I  am  about,  in  other  words,  to  invite  attention  to 
what  is  called  self-sacrifice.  Goodness  is  the  realiza- 
tion by  an  individual  of  his  own  perfection,  and  that 
perfection  consists,  as  we  have  seen,  in  both  har- 
mony and  extent.  And  provisionally  these  two 
features  will  not  quite  coincide.  To  reduce  the  raw 
material  of  one's  nature  to  the  highest  degree  of 
system,  and  to  use  every  element  from  whatever 
source  as- a  subordinate  means  to  this  object,  is 
certainly  one  genuine  view  of  goodness.  On  the 
other  hand  to  widen  as  far  as  possible  the  end  to 
be  pursued,  and  to  realize  this  through  the  distrac- 
tion or  the  dissipation  of  one's  own  individuality,  is 
certainly  also  good.  An  individual  system,  aimed 
at  in  one's  self,  and  again  the  subordination  of  one's 
own  development  to  a  wide-embracing  end,  are  each 

'  This  applies  emphatically  to  any  specific  feeling  of  goodness 
or  morality. 


GOODNESS.  415 

an  aspect  of  the  moral  principle.  So  far  as  they 
are  discrepant,  these  two  pursuits  may  be  called, 
the  one,  self-assertion,  and  the  other,  self-sacrifice. 

(And,  however  "niuch    these   must  diverge,   each   is~ 
morally  good  ;  and,  taken  in  the  abstract,  you  can- 
not say  that  one  is  better  than  the  other. 

I  am  far  from  suggesting  that  in  morality  we  are 
forced  throughout  to  make  a  choice  between  such 
incompatible  ideals.  For  this  is  not  the  case,  and, 
if  it  were  so,  life  could  hardly  be  lived.  To  a  very 
large  extent  by  taking  no  thought  about  his  indi- 
vidual perfection,  and  by  aiming  at  that  which  seems 
to  promise  no  personal  advantage,  a  man  secures 
his  private  welfare.  We  may,  perhaps,  even  say 
that  in  the  main  there  is  no  collision  between  self- 
sacrifice  and  self-assertion,  and  that  on  the  whole 
neither  of  these,  in  the  proper  sense,  exists  for 
morality,  But,  while  admitting  or  asserting  to  the 
full  the  general  identity  of  these  aspects,  I  am  here 
insisting  on  the  fact  of  their  partial  divergence. 
'And  that,  at  least  in  some  respects  and  with  some 
persons,  these  two  ideals  seem  hostile  no  sane 
observer  can  deny. 

In  other  words  we  must  admit  that  two  great) 
divergent  forms  of  moral  goodness  exist.  In  orderl 
to  realize  the  idea  of  a  perfect  self  a  man  may  have 
to  choose  between  two  partially  conflicting  methods. 
Morality,  in  short,  may  dictate  either  self-sacrifice 
or  self-assertion,  and  it  is  important  to  clear  our 
ideas  as  to  the  meaning  of  each.  A  common  mis- 
take is  to  identify  the  first  with  the  living  for  others, 
and  the  second  with  living  for  oneself.  Virtue  upon 
this  view  is  social,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  either 
visibly  or  invisibly.  The  development  of  the  indi- 
vidual, that  is,  unless  it  reacts  to  increase  the  welfare 
of  society,  can  certainly  not  be  moral.  This  doctrine 
I  am  still  forced  to  consider  as  a  truth  which  has 
been  exaggerated  and  perverted  into  error.'     There 

See  Ethical  Studies,  ^fp.  200-103.    And  compare  here  below, 
p.  431,  and   p.  sap. 


4i6 


REALITY. 


.>^ 


arc  intellectual  and  other  accomplishments,  to  which 
I  at  least  cannot  refuse  the  title  of  virtue.  But  I 
cannot  assume  that,  without  exception,  these  must 
all  somehow  add  to  what  is  called  social  welfare; 
nor.  again,  do  I  see  how  to  make  a  social  organism 
the  subject  which  directly  possesses  them.  But,  if 
so,  it  is  impossible  for  me  to  admit  that  all  virtue  is 
essentially  or  primarily  social.  On  the  contrary,  the 
neglect  of  social  good,  for  the  sake  of  pursuing  other 
ends,  may  not  only  be  moral  self-assertion,  but  again, 
equally  under  other  conditions,  it  may  be  moral  self- 
sacrifice.  We  can  even  say  that  the  living  "  for 
others."  rather  than  living  "  for  myself,"  may  be 
immoral  and  selfish. 

And  you  can  hardly  make  the  difference  between 
self-sacrifice  and  self-assertion  consist  in  this,  that 
the  idea  pursued,  in  one  case,  falls  beyond  the  indi- 
vidual and,  in  the  other  case,  fails  to  do  so.  Or, 
rather,  such  a  phrase,  left  undefined,  can  scarcely  be 
said  to  have  a  meaning.  Every  permanent  end  of 
every  kind  will  go  beyond  the  individual,  if  the  in- 
dividual is  taken  in  his  lowest  sense.  And,  passing 
that  by,  obviously  the  content  realized  in  an  indi- 
vidual's perfection  must  be  also  above  him  and  be- 
yond him.  His  perfection  is  not  one  thing  apart 
from  the  rest  of  the  universe,  and  he  gains  it  only 
by  appropriating,  and  by  reducing  to  a  special  har- 
mony, the  common  substance  of  all.  It  is  obvious 
that  his  private  welfare,  so  far  as  he  is  social,  must 
include  to  some  e.xtent  the  welfare  of  others.  And 
his  intellectual,  aesthetic,  and  moral  development,  in 
short  the  whole  ideal  side  of  his  nature,  is  clearly 
built  up  out  of  elements  which  he  shares  with  other 
souls.  Hence  the  individual's  end  in  self-advance- 
ment must  always  transcend  his  private  being.  In 
fact,  the  difference  between  self-assertion  and  self- 
sacrifice  does  not  lie  in  the  contents  which  are  used, 
but  in  the  diverse  uses  which  are  made  of  them  ; 
and  I  will  attempt  to  explain  this. 


GOODNESS. 


417 


In  moral  self-assertion  the  materials  used  may  be 
drawn  from  any  source,  and  they  may  belong  to  any 
world.  They  may,  and  they  must,  largely  realize 
ends  which  visibly  transcend  my  life.  But  it  is  self- 
assertion  when,  in  applying  these  elements,  I  am 
guided  by  the  idea  of  the  greatest  system  in  myself. 
If  the  standard  used  in  measuring  and  selecting  my 
material  is,  in  other  words,  the  development  of  my 
jindividual  perfection,  then  my  conduct  is  palpably 
l«o/  self-sacrifice,  and  may  be  opposed  to  it.  It  is 
kelf-sacrifice  when  I  pursue  an  end  by  which  my 
Individuality  suffers  loss.  In  the  attainment  of  this 
object  my  self  is  distracted,  or  is  diminished,  or  even 
dissipated.  I  may,  for  social  purposes,  give  up  my 
welfare  for  the  sake  of  other  persons  ;  or  again  I 
may  devote  myself  to  some  impersonal  pursuit,  by 
which  the  health  and  harmony  of  my  self  is  injured. 
Wherever  the  moral  end  followed  is  followed  to  the 
loss  of  individual  well-being,  then  that  is  self-sacri- 
fice, whether  I  am  living  "for  others"  or  not.'  But 
self-sacrifice  is  also,  and  on  the  other  hand,  a  form 
of  self-realization.  The  wider  end,  which  is  aimed 
at,  is,  visibly  or  invisibly,  reached  ;  and  in  that  pur- 
suit and  that  attainment  I  find  my  personal  good. 

It  is  the  essential  nature  of  my  self,  as  finite, 
equally  to  assert  and,  at  the  same  time,  to  pass  be- 
yond itself;  and  hence  the  objects  of  self-sacrifice 
and  of  self-advancement  are  each  equally  mine.  If 
we  are  willing  to  push  a  metaphor  far  beyond  its 
true  and  natural  limits,  we  may  perhaps  state  the 
contrast  thus.  In  self-assertion  the  organ  considers 
first  its  own  development,  and  for  that  purpose  it 
draws  material  from  the  common  life  of  all  organs. 
But  in  self-sacrifice  the  organ  aims  at  realizing  some 
feature  of  the  life  larger  than  its  own,  and  is  ready 
to  do  this  at  the  cost  of  injury  to  its  own  existence. 
It  has  foregone  the  idea  of  a  perfection,  individual, 

'   I  am,  for  the  present  purpose,  taking  no  account  of  immor- 
ality or  of  the  self-sacrifice  which  seems  failure. 


A.  R, 


E  E 


4i8 


REALITY. 


rounded,  and  concrete.  It  is  willing  to  see  itself 
.  abstract  and  mutilated,  over-specialized,  or  stunted, 
lor  even  destroyed.  But  this  actual  defect  it  can 
Viiake  up  ideally,  by  an  expansion  beyond  its  special 
limits,  and  by  an  identification  of  its  will  with  a 
Wider  reality.  Certainly  the  two  pursuits,  thus  de- 
scribed, must  in  the  main  coincide  and  be  one.  The 
whole  is  furthered  most  by  the  self- seeking  of  its 
parts,  for  in  these  alone  the  whole  can  appear  and 
be  real.  And  the  part  again  is  individually  bettered 
by  its  action  for  the  whole,  since  thus  it  gains  the 
supply  of  that  common  substance  which  is  necessary 
to  fill  it.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  this  general  coin- 
cidence is  only  general,  and  assuredly  there  are 
points  at  which  it  ceases.  And  here  self-assertion 
and  self-sacrifice  begin  to  diverge,  and  each  to 
acquire  its  distinctive  character. 

Each  of  these  modes  of  action  realizes  the  self, 
and  realizes  that  which  is  higher;  and  {I  must  re- 
peat this)  thejLMCj^qually  virtuous  and  right.  To 
what  then  should  the  individual  have  any  duty,  if 
he  has  none  to  himself  ?  Or  is  it,  again,  really 
supposed  that  in  his  perfection  the  whole  is  not  per- 
fected, and  that  he  is  somewhere  enjoying  his  own 
advantage  and  holding  it  apart  from  the  universe  ? 
But  we  have  seen  that  such  a  separation  between 
the  Absolute  and  finite  beings  is  meaningless.  Or 
shall  we  be  assured,  upon  the  other  side,  that  for  a 
thing  to  sacrifice  itself  is  contrary  to  reason  ."*  But 
we  have  found  that  the  very  essence  of  finite  beings 
is  self-contradictory,  that  their  own  nature  includes 
relation  to  others,  and  that  they  are  already  each 
outside  of  its  own  existence.  And,  if  so,  surely  it 
would  be  impossible,  and  most  contrary  to  rectson, 
that  the  finite,  realizing  itself,  should  not  also  tran- 
scend its  own  limits.  If  a  finite  individual  really  is 
not  self-discrepant,  then  let  that  be  argued  and 
shown.  But,  otherwise,  that  he  should  be  compelled 
to  follow  two  ideals  of  perfection   which  diverge, 


GOODNESS.  419 

appears  natural  and  necessary.  And  each  of  these 
pursuits,  in  general  and  in  the  abstract,  is  equally 
good.  It  is  only  the  particular  conditions  which  in 
each  case  can  decide  between  them. 

Now  that  this  divergence  ceases,  and  is  brought 
together  in   the  end,  is   most  certain.      For  nothing 
is  outside  the   Absolute,  and  in  the  Absolute  there 
is    nothing    imperfect.       And   an    un-accomplished 
object,     implying   discrepancy    between    idea    and 
existence,     is    most   surely    imperfection.      In    the 
Absolute  everything    finite    attains    the     perfection 
which  it  seeks  ;  but,  upon  the  other  hand,  it  cannot 
gain  perfection  precisely  as  it  seeks  it      For,  as  we 
have   seen  throughout,   the   finite  is   more    or    less 
transmuted,    and,    as    such,     disappears    in    being 
accomplished.     This  common  destiny   is  assuredly 
the  end  of  the  Good.     The  ends  sought  by  self- 
assertion  and  self-sacrifice   are,  each  alike,  unattain- 
able.     The  individual  never  can  in  himself  become 
an  harmonious  system.      And  in    the  wider  ideal  to 
which  he  devotes  himself,  no  matter  how  thoroughly. 
he   never  can    find  complete  self-realization.     For, 
even  if  we  take  that  ideal  to  be  perfect  and  to  be 
somehow  completely  fulfilled,  yet,  after  all,  he  him- 
self is  not  totally  absorbed  in  it.      If  his  discordant 
element  is  for  faith  swallowed  up,  yet  faith,  no  less, 
means  that  a  jarring  appearance  remains.     And,  in 
the  complete  gift  and  dissipation  of  his  personality. 
h€,  as  such,  must  vanish  ;  and,  with   that,  the  good 
is,    as    such,   transcended    and    submerged.       This 
result  is  but  the  conclusion  with  which  our  chapter 
began.      Goodness  is  an  appearance,  it   is  pheno- 
menal, and  therefore  self-contradictory.     And  there- 
fore,  as   was    the    case  with  degrees   of  truth   and 
reality,  it  shows  two  forms  of  one  standard  which  will 
not  wholly   coincide.       In    the   end,    where   every 
discord   is  brought  to  harmony,  every  idea   is  also 
realized.       But  there,    where  nothing  can   be  lost, 
everj'thing,   by   addition    and    by    re-arrangement, 


420 


REALITY, 


more  or  less  changes  its  character.  And  most 
emphatically  no  self-assertion  nor  any  self-sacrifice, 
nor  any  goodness  or  morality,  has,  as  such,  any 
reality  in  the  Absolute.  Goodness  is  a  subordinate 
and,  therefore,  a  self-contradictory  aspect  of  the 
universe. 


And,  with  this,  it  is  full  time  that  we  went 
forward  ;  but,  for  the  sake  of  some  readers,  I  will 
dwell  longer  on  the  relative  character  of  the  Good. 
Too  many  English  moralists  assume  blindly  that 
goodness  is  ultimate  and  absolute.  For  as  regards 
metaphysics  they  are  incompetent,  and  that  in  the 
religion,  which  probably  they  profess  or  at  least 
esteem,  morality,  as  such,  is  subordinate — such  a 
fact  suggests  to  them  nothing.  They  are  ignorant 
of  the  view  for  which  all  things  finite  in  different 
degrees  are  real  and  true,  and  for  which,  at  the 
same  time,  not  one  of  them  is  ultimate.  And  they 
cannot  understand  that  the  Whole  may  be  consistent, 
when  the  appearances,  which  qualify  it,  conflict  with 
one  another.  For  holding  on  to  each  separate 
appearance,  as  a  thing  absolute  and  not  relative, 
they  fix  these  each  in  that  partial  character  which 
is  unreal  and  untrue.  And  such  one-sided  abstrac- 
tions, which  in  coming  together  are  essentially 
transformed,  they  consider  to  be  ultimate  and 
fundamental  facts.  Thus  in  goodness  the  ends  of 
self-assertion  and  of  self-sacrifice  are  inconsistent, 
each  with  itself  and  each  with  the  other.  They  are 
fragmentary  truths,  neither  of  which  is,  as  such, 
ultimately  true.  But  it  is  just  these  relative  aspects 
which  the  popular  moralist  holds  to,  each  as  real 
by  itself ;  and  hence  ensues  a  blind  tangle  of  be- 
wilderment and  error.  To  follow  this  in  detail  is 
not  my  task,  and  still  less  my  desire,  but  it  may  be 
instructive,  perhaps,  briefly  to  consider  it  further. 

There  is  first  one  point  which  should  be  obvious, 
but    which    seems    often     forgotten.       In    asking 


GOODNESS.  42  I 

whether  goodness  can,  in  the  end,  be  self-consistent 
and  be  real,  we  are  not  concerned  merely  with  the 
relation  between  virtue  and  selfishness.  For  sup- 
pose that  there  is  no  difference  between  these  two, 
except  merely  for  our  blindness,  yet,  possessing 
this  first  crown  of  our  wishes,  we  have  still  not 
solved  the  main  problem.  It  will  certainly  now  be 
worth  my  while  to  seek  the  good  of  my  neighbour, 
since  by  no  other  course  can  I  do  any  better  for 
myself  and  since  what  is  called  self-sacrifice,  or 
benevolent  action,  is  in  fact  the  only  possible  way 
to  secure  my  advantage.  But  then,  upon  the  other 
hand,  a  mere  balance  of  advantage,  however  satis- 
factory the  means  by  wliich  I  come  to  possess  it,  is 
most  assuredly  not  the  fulfilment  of  my  desire.  For 
the  desire  of  human  beings  (this  is  surely  a  common- 
place) has  no  limit.  Goodness,  in  other  words, 
must  imply  an  attempt  to  reach  perfection,  and  it  is 
the  nature  of  the  finite  to  seek  for  that  which 
nothing  finite  can  satisfy.  But,  if  so.  with  a  mere 
balance  of  advantage  I  have  not  realized  my  good. 
And,  however  much  virtue  may  be  nothing  in  the 
world  but  a  refined  form  of  self-seeking,  yet,  with 
this,  virtue  is  not  one  whit  the  less  a  pursuit  of 
what  is  inconsistent  and  therefore  impossible.  And 
goodness,  or  the  attainment  of  such  an  impossible 
end,  is  still  self-contradictory. 

Further,  since  it  seems  necessary  for  me  not  to 
be  ashamed  of  platitude,  let  me  call  the  attention 
of  the  reader  to  some  evident  truths.  No  existing 
social  organism  secures  to  its  individuals  any  more 
than  an  imperfect  good,  and  in  all  of  them  self- 
sacrifice  marks  the  fact  of  a  failure  in  principle.  But 
even  in  an  imaginary  society,  such  as  is  foretold  to 
us  in  the  New  Jerusalem  of  Mr.  Spencer,  it  is  only 
for  thoughtless  credulity  that  evil  has  vanished. 
i'or  it  is  not  easy  to  forget  that  finite  beings  are 
physically  subject  to  accident,  or  easy  to  believe 
that  this   their   natural  essence  is  somehow   to  be 


423 


REALITY, 


removed.  And,  even  so  and  in  any  case, the  members 
of  an  organism  must  of  necessity  be  sacrificed  more 
or  less  to  the  whole.  For  they  must  more  or  less 
be  made  special  in  their  function,  and  that  means 
rendered,  to  some  extent,  one-sided  and  narrow. 
And,  if  so,  the  harmony  of  their  individual  being 
must  inevitably  in  some  degree  suffer.  And  it 
must  suffer  again,  if  the  individual  devotes  himself 
to  some  aesthetic  or  intellectual  pursuit.  On  the 
other  side,  even  within  the  New  Jerusalem,  if  a 
person  aims  merely  at  his  own  good,  he,  none  the 
less,  is  fore-doomed  to  imperfection  and  failure. 
I'or  on  a  defective  and  shifting  natural  basis  he 
tries  to  build  a  harmonious  system ;  and  his  task, 
hopeless  for  this  reason,  is  for  another  reason  more 
hopeless.  He  strives  within  finite  limits  to  construct 
a  concordant  whole,  when  the  materials,  which  he  is 
forced  to  use,  have  no  natural  endings,  but  extend 
themselves  indefinitely  beyond  himself  into  an  end- 
less world  of  relations.  And,  if  so,  once  more  we 
have  been  brought  back  to  the  familiar  truth,  that 
there  is  no  such  possibility  as  human  perfection. 
But,  if  so,  then  goodness,  since  it  must  needs  pur- 
sue the  perfect,  is  in  its  essence  self-discrepant,  and 
in  the  end  is  unreal.  It  is  an  appearance  one-sided 
and  relative,  and  not  an  ultimate  reality. 

But  to  this  idea  of  relativity,  both  in  the  case 
of  goodness  and  every  other  order  of  phenomena, 
popular  philosophy  remains  blind.  Everything, 
for  it,  is  either  a  delusion,  and  so  nothing  at  all,  or 
is  on  the  other  hand  a  fact,  and,  because  it  exists, 
therefore,  as  such,  real.  That  reality  can  appear 
nowhere  except  in  a  system  of  relative  unrealities, 
that,  taken  apart  from  this  system,  the  several 
appearances  are  in  contradiction  with  one  another 
and  each  within  itself,  that,  nevertheless,  outside  of 
this  field  of  jarring  elements  there  neither  is  nor  can 
be  anything,  and  that,  if  appearances  were  not 
irremediably  self-discrepant,  they  could  not  possibly 


GOODNESS. 


423 


/ 


be  the  appearances  of  the  Real — all  this  to  popular 
thought  remains  meaningless.  Common  sense 
openly  revolts  against  the  idea  of  a  fact  which  is 
not  a  reality  ;  or  again,  as  sober  criticism,  it  plumes 
itself  on  suggesting  cautious  questions,  doubts 
which  dogmatically  assume  the  truth  of  its  coarsest 
prejudices.  Nowhere  are  these  infirmities  illus- 
trated better  than  by  popular  Ethics,  in  the  attitude 
it  takes  towards  the  necessary  discrepancies  of 
goodness.  That  these  discrepancies  exist  because 
goodness  is  not  absolute,  and  that  their  solution 
is  not  possible  until  goodness  is  degraded  to  an 
appearance — such  a  view  is  blindly  ignored.  Nor 
is  it  asked  if  the.se  opposites,  self-assertion  and 
self-sacrifice,  are  not  each  internally  inconsistent 
and  so  irrational.  But  the  procedure  is,  first, 
tacitly  to  assume  that  each  opposite  is  fixed,  and 
will  not  pass  beyond  itself.  And  then,  from  this 
basis,  one  of  the  extremes  is  rejected  as  an  illusion  ; 
or  else,  both  being  absolute  and  solid,  an  attempt 
is  made  to  combine  them  externally  or  to  show  that 
somehow  they  coincide.  I  will  adil  a  few  words  on 
these  developments. 

(i.)  The  good  may  be  identified  with  self-sacrifice, 
and  self-assertion  may,  therefore,  be  totally  ex- 
cluded. But  the  good,  as  self-sacrifice,  is  clearly  in 
collision  with  itself.  For  an  act  of  self-denial  is,  no 
less,  in  some  sense  a  self-realization,  and  it  inevit- 
ably includes  an  aspect  of  self-assertion.  And 
hence  the  good,  as  the  mere  attainment  of  self- 
sacrifice,  is  really  unmeaning.  For  it  is  in  finite 
selves,  after  all,  that  the  good  must  be  realized. 
And,  further,  to  say  that  perfection  must  be  always 
the  perfection  of  something  else,  appears  quite  in- 
consistent. For  it  will  mean  either  that  on  the 
whole  the  good  is  nothing  whatever,  or  else  that  it 
consists  in  that  which  each  does  or  may  enjoy,  yet 
not  as  good,  but  as  a  something  extraneously  added 
unto  him.     The  good,  in   other  words,  in  this  case 


424 


KEALITV. 


will  be  not  good  ;  and  in  the  former  case  it  will  be 
nothing  positive,  and  therefore  nothing.  That  each 
should  pursue  the  general  perfection,  should  act  for 
the  advantage  of  a  whole  in  which  his  self  is  in- 
cluded, or  should  add  to  a  collection  in  which  he  may 
share — is  certainly  tiot  pure  self-sacrifice.  And  a 
maxim  that  each  should  aim  purely  at  his  neigh- 
bour's welfare  in  separation  from  his  own,  we  have 
seen  is  self  inconsistent.  It  can  hardly  be  ultimate 
or  reasonable,  when  its  meaning  seems  to  end  in 
nonsense.* 

(ii.)  Or,  rejecting  all  self  transcendence  as  an  idle 
word,  popular  Ethics  may  set  up  pure  self-assertion 
as  all  that  is  good.  It  may  perhaps  desire  to  add 
that  by  the  self-seeking  of  each  the  advantage  of  all 
is  best  secured,  but  this  addition  clearly  is  not 
contained  in  self-assertion,  and  cannot  properly  be 
included.  For  by  such  an  addition,  if  it  were 
necessary,  the  end  at  once  would  have  been 
essentially  modified.  It  was  self-assertion  pure, 
and  not  qualified,  which  was  adopted  as  goodness ; 
and  it  is  this  alone  which  we  must  now  consider. 
And  we  perceive  first  (as  we  saw  above)  that  such  a 
good  is  unattainable,  since  perfection  cannot  be 
realized  in  a  finite  being.  Not  only  is  the  physical 
basis  too  shifting,  but  the  contents  too  e-ssentially 
belong  to  a  world  outside  the  self ;  and  hence  it  is 
impossible  that  they  should  be  brought  to  completion 
and  to  harmony  within  it.  One  may  indeed  seek 
to  approach  nearer  to  the  unattainable.  Aiming  at 
a  system  within  oneself,  one  may  forcibly  abstract 
from  the  necessary  connections  of  the  material  used. 
We  may  consider  this  and  strive  to  apply  it  one- 
sidedly,  and  in  but  a  single  portion  of  its  essential 
aspects.     But  the  other  aspect  inseparably  against 

*  It  may  be  as  well  perhaps  to  add  that,  neither  in  this  sense 
nor  in  any  other,  can  the  good  be  defined  negatively.  At  that 
point,  in  any  definition,  where  a  negative  term  is  introduced,  the 
reader  should  specially  look  for  a  defect. 


GOODNESS. 


425 


our  will  is  brought  in,  and  it  stamps  our  effort  with 
inconsistency.       Thus  even    to    pursue    imperfectly 
one's  own  advantage  by  itself  is  unreasonable,  for 
by  itself  and  purely  it   has  no  existence  at  all.      It 
was  a  trait   characteristic  of  critical  Common  Sense 
when  it  sought  for  the   individual's   moral  end  by 
,  first  supposing  him  isolated.      For  a  dogmatic  as- 
sumption that  the   individual  remains  what    he    is 
when  you   have  cut  off  his  relations,  is  very  much  Ci/    "  j^^ 
what    the  vulgar    understand    by    criticism.       But,  "^     « 
when    such    a   question    is   discussed,    it   must    be  (>«-^A^ 
answered  quite  otherwise.      The  contents,  asserted  ^ 
in  the  individual's  self-seeking,    necessarily  extend     t, 
beyond   his    private  limits.      A    maxim,    therefore,^«Mr»***' 
merely  to  pursue  one's    own  advantage  is,    taken 
strictly,  inconsistent.     And  a  principle  which  contra- 
dicts itself  is,  once  more,  not  reasonable.' 

(iii.)  In  the  third  place,  admitting  self-assertion 
and  self-denial  as  equally  good,  popular  thought 
attempts  to  bring  them  together  from  outside. 
Goodness  will  now  consist  in  the  coincidence  of 
these  independent  goods.  The  two  are  not  to  be 
absorbed  by  and  resolved  into  a  third.  Each,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  to  retain  unaltered  the  character 
which  it  has,  and  the  two,  remaining  two,  are  some- 
how to  be  conjoined.  And  this,  as  we  have  seen 
throughout  our  work,  is  quite  impossible.  If  two 
conflicting  finite  elements  are  anywhere  to  be 
harmonized,  the  first  condition  is  that  each  should 
forego  and  should  transcend  its  private  character. 
Each,  in  other  words,  working  out  the  discrepanc)- 

'  The  same  conclusion  holds  if  for  "'  advantage "  one  writes 
"  pleasure."  For  pleasure  is  necessarily  connected  with  other 
content,  and  is  not  isolated,  or  again  conjoined  hap-hazard  and 
accidentally.  One  m.iy  of  course  pursue  "  merely  one's  own  " 
pleasure,  in  the  sense  that  one  tries  to  aim  at  and  to  consider 
this  partial  end  by  itself.  But,  if  you  assert  that  this  end  has  not 
anotiier  aspect  which  contradicts  "  merely  one's  own,"  the  asser- 
tion is  false.  And  it  is,  I  presume,  a  moral  platitude  that  selfish 
action  always  must  concern  more  than  the  actor. 


426 


REALITY. 


already  within  itself,  passes  beyond  itself  and  unites 
with  its  opposite  in  a  product  higher  than  either. 
But  such  a  transcendence  can  have  no  meaning  to 
popular  Ethics.  "That  has  assumed  without  examin- 
ation that  each  finite  end,  taken  by  itself,  is  reason- 
able ;  and  it  therefore  demands  that  each,  as  such, 
should  together  be  satisfied.  And,  blind  to  theory, 
it  is  blind  also  to  the  practical  refutation  of  its 
dogmas  by  everyday  life.  There  a  man  can  seek 
the  general  welfare  in  his  own,  and  can  find  his  own 
end  accomplished  in  the  general ;  for  goodness  there 
already  is  the  transcendence  and  solution  of  one- 
sided elements.  The  good  is  already  there,  not  the 
external  conjunction,  but  the  substantial  identity  of 
these  opposites.  They  are  not  coincident  with,  but 
each  is  in,  and  makes  one  aspect  of,  the  other.  In 
short,  already  within  goodness  that  work  is  imper- 
fectly begun,  which,  when  completed,  must  take  us 
beyond  goodness  altogether.  But  for  popular  Ethics, 
as  we  saw,  not  only  goodness  itseli.  but  each  of  its 
one-sided  features  is  fixed  as  absolute.  And,  these 
having  been  so  fixed  in  irrational  independence,  an 
effort  is  made  to  find  the  good  in  their  external 
conjunction. 

Goodness  is  apparently  now  to  be  the  coincidence 
of  two  ultimate  goods,  but  it  is  hard  to  see  how 
such  an  end  can  be  ultimate  or  reasonable.  That 
two  elements  should  necessarily  come  together,  and, 
at  the  same  time,  that  neither  should  be  qualified 
by  this  relation,  or  again  that  a  relation  in  the  end 
should  not  imply  a  whole,  which  subordinates  and 
qualifies  the  two  terms — all  this  in  the  end  seems 
unintelligible.  But,  again,  if  the  relation  and  the 
whole  are  to  qualify  the  terms,  one  does  not  under- 
stand how  either  by  itself  could  ever  have  been 
ultimate.'     In  ^ort,  the  bare  conjunction  of  inde- 

'  The  same  difficulty  will  appear  if  an  attempt  is  made  to  state 
the  general  maxim.  Both  ends  are  to  remain  and  to  be  ultimate, 
and  hence  neither  is  lo  be  qualified  by  the  other  ur  the  whole, 


GOODNESS, 


427 


pendent  reals  is  an  idea  which  contradicts  itself. 
But  dt^Xhis~nafu rally  Common  Sense  has  no  know- 
ledge at  all,  and  it  therefore  blindly  proceeds  with 
its  impossible  task. 

That  task  is  to  defend  the  absolute  character  of 
goodness  by  showing  that  the  discrepancies,  which 
it  presents,  disappear  in  the  end,  and  that  these 
discrepant  features,  none  the  less,  survive  each  in  its 
own  character.  But  by  popular  Ethics  this  task 
usually  is  not  understood.  It  directs  itself  there- 
fore to  prove  the  coincidence  of  self-seeking  and 
benevolence,  or  to  show,  in  other  words,  that  self- 
sacrifice,  if  moral,  is  impossible.  And  with  this 
conclusion  reached,  in  its  opinion,  the  main  problem 
would  be  solved.  Now  I  will  not  ask  how  far  in 
such  a  consummation  its  ultimate  ends  would,  one 
or  both,  have  been  subordinated  ;  for  by  its  conclu- 
sion, in  any  case,  the  main  problem  is  not  touched. 
We  have  already  seen  that  our  desires,  whether  for 
ourselves  or  for  others,  do  not  stop  short  of  perfec- 
tion. But  where  each  individual  can  say  no  more 
than  this,  that  it  has  been  made  worth  his  while  to 
regard  others'  interests,  perfection  surely  may  be 
absent.  And  where  the  good  aimed  at  is  absent,  to 
affirm  that  we  have  got  rid  of  the  puzzle  offered  by 
goodness  seems  realty  thoughtless.  It  is,  however, 
a  thoughtlessness  which,  as  we  have  perceived,  is 
characteristic ;  and  let  us  pass  to  the  external  means 
employed  to  produce  moral  harmony. 

Little  need  here  be  said.  We  may  find,  thrust 
forward  or  indicated  feebly,  a  well-worn  contrivance. 
This  is  of  course  the  deiis  ex  macAina,  an  idea  which 
no  serious  student  of  first  principles  is  called  on  to 
consider.  A  God,  which  has  to  make  things  what 
otherwise,  and    by  tlTeir  own   nature,  they  are  not, 

tor  to  be  so  qualified  is  to  be  transcended.  I  may  add  that  a 
negative  form  of  statement,  here  as  everywhere,  serves  no  purpose 
but  to  obscure  the  problem.  This  is,  however,  a  reason  why  it 
may  be  instinctively  selected. 


428 


REALITY. 


may  summarily  be  dismissed  as  an  exploded  ab- 
surdity. And  that  perfection  should  exist  in  the 
finite,  as  such,  we  have  seen  to  be  even  directly 
contrary  to  the  nature  of  things.  A  supposition 
that  it  may  be  made  worth  my  while  to  be  benevol- 
ent— especially  when  an  indefinite  prolongation  of 
my  life  is  imagined — cannot,  in  itself  and  for  our 
knowledge,  be  called  impossible.  But  then,  upon 
the  other  hand,  we  have  remarked  that  such  an 
imagined  improvement  is  not  a  solution  of  the 
actual  main  problem.  The  belief  may  possibly  add 
much  to  our  comfort  by  assuring  us  that  virtue  is 
the  best,  and  is  the  only  true,  selfishness.  But  such 
a  truth,  if  true,  would  not  imply  that  both  or  either 
of  our  genuine  ends  is,  as  such,  realized.  And, 
failing  this,  the  wider  discrepancy  has  certainly  not 
been  removed  from  goodness.  We  may  say,  in  a 
word,  that  the  deus  ex  macliina  refuses  to  work. 
Little  can  be  brought  in  by  this  venerable  artifice 
except  a  fresh  source  of  additional  collision  and 
perple-xity.  And,  giving  up  this  embarrassing 
agency,  popular  Ethics  may  prefer  to  make  an 
appeal  to  "  Reason."  For,  if  its  two  moral  ends  are 
each  reasonable,  then,  if  somehow  they  do  not 
coincide,  the  nature  of  things  must  be  unreasonable. 
But  we  have  shown,  on  the  other  hand,  that  neither 
end  by  itself  is  reasonable  ;  and,  if  the  nature  of 
things  were  to  bring  together  elements  discordant 
within  themselves  and  conflicting  with  one  another, 
and  were  to  attempt,  without  transforming  their 
character,  to  make  these  coincide, — the  nature  of 
things  would  have  revealed  itself  as  an  apotheosis 
of  unreason  or  of  popular  Ethics.  And,  baffled  by 
its  failure  to  find  its  dogmas  realized  in  the  universe, 
this  way  of  thinking  at  last  may  threaten  us  with 
total  scepticism.  But  here,  once  more,  it  is  but 
speaking  of  that  of  which  it  knows  really  nothing  ; 
for  an  honest  scepticism  is  a  thing  outside  its  com- 
prehension.    An   honest  and  truth-seeking   sceptic- 


GOODNESS. 


429 


ism  pushes  questions  to  the  end,  and  knows  that 
the  end  lies  hid  in  that  which  is  assumed  at  the 
beginning.  But  the  scepticism  (so-called)  of  Com- 
mon Sense  from  first  to  last  is  dogmatic.  It  takes 
for  granted,  first,  without  examination  that  certain 
doctrines  are  true  ;  it  then  demands  that  this  collec- 
tion of  dogmas  should  come  to  an  agreement ;  and, 
when  its  demand  is  rejected  by  the  universe,  it  none 
the  less  persists  in  reiterating  its  old  assumptions. 
And  this  dogmatism,  simply  because  it  is  baffled 
and  perplexed,  gets  the  name  of  scepticism.  But  a 
sincere  scepticism,  attacking  without  fear  each  parti- 
cular prejudice,  finds  that  every  finite  view,  when 
taken  by  itself,  becomes  inconsistent.  And  borne 
on  this  inconsistency,  which  in  each  case  means  a 
self- transcendence,  such  a  scepticism  is  lifted  to  see 
a  whole  in  which  all  finites  blend  and  are  resolved. 
But  when  each  fact  and  end  has  foregone  its  claim, 
as  such,  to  be  ultimate  or  reasonable,  then  reason 
and  harmony  in  the  highest  sense  have  begun  to 
appear.  And  scepticism  in  the  end  survives  as  a 
mere  aspect  of  constructive  metaphysics.  With 
this  we  may  leave  the  irrational  dogmas  of  popular 
Ethics. 


The  discussion  of  these  has  been  wearisome,  but 
perhaps  not  uninstructive.  It  should  have  confirmed 
us  in  our  general  conclusion  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
good.  Goodness  is  not  absolute  or  ultimate  ;  it  is 
but  one^  side,  one  partial  aspect,  of  the  nature  of 
things.  And  it  manifests  its  relativity  by  incon- 
sistency, by  a  self-contradiction  in  principle,  and 
by  a  tendency  shown  towards  separation  in  that 
principle's  working,  an  attempted  division,  which 
again  is  inconsistent  and  cannot  rest  in  itself. 
Goodness,  as  such,  is  but  appearance  which  is 
transcended  in  the  Absolute.  But,  upon  the  other 
hand,  since  in  that  Absolute  no  appearance  is  lost, 
the   good    is   a  main   and    essential    factor   in    the 


430 


REALITY. 


universe.      By  accepting  its    transmutation   it  botli 
realizes  its  own  destiny  and  survives  in  the  result. 

We  might  reach  the  same  conclusion,  briefly  per- 
haps, by  considering  the  collision  of  ends.  In  the 
Whole  every  idea  must  be  realized  ;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  conflict  of  ends  is  such  that  to 
combine  them  mechanically  is  quite  impossible.  It 
will  follow  then  that,  in  their  attainment,  their  charac- 
ters must  be  transmuted.  We  may  say  at  once  that 
none  of  them,  and  yet  that  each  of  them,  is  good. 
And  among  these  ends  must  be  included  what  we 
rightly  condemn  as  Evil  (Chapter  xvii.).  That  posi- 
tive object,  which  is  followed  in  opposition  to  the 
good,  will  unite  with,  and  will  conduce  to,  the  ulti- 
mate goal.  And  the  conduct  which  seems  merely 
bad,  which  appears  to  pursue  no  positive  content 
and  to  e.xhibit  no  system,  will  in  the  same  way  be- 
come good.  Both  by  its  assertion  and  its  negation 
it  will  subserve  an  over-ruling  end.  Good  and  evil 
reproduce  that  main  result  which  we  found  in  our 
examination  of  truth  and  error.  The  opposition  in 
the  end  is  unreal,  but  it  is,  for  all  that,  emphatically 
actual  and  valid.  Error  and  evil  are  facts,  and 
most  assuredly  there  are  degrees  of  each  ;  and 
whether  anything  is  better  or  worse,  does  without 
any  doubt  make  a  difference  to  the  Absolute.  And 
certainly  the  better  anything  is,  the  less  totally  in 
the  end  is  its  being  over-ruled.  But  nothing,  how- 
ever good,  can  in  the  end  be  real  precisely  as  it 
appears.  Evil  and  good,  in  short,  are  not  ultimate; 
they  are  relative  factors  which  cannot  retain  their 
special  characters  in  the  Whole.  And  we  may 
perhaps  now  venture  to  consider  this  position 
established. 


But,  bearing  in  mind  the  unsatisfactory  state  of 
current  thought  on  these  topics,  I  think  it  well  to 
follow  the  enquiry  into  further  detail.  There  is  a 
more  refined  sense  in  which  we  have  not  yet  dealt 


GOODNESS.  43  I 

with  troodness.'  The  good,  we  may  be  iiiformed,  is 
morality,  and  morality  is  inward.  It  does  not  con- 
sist in  the  attainment  of  a  mere  result,  either  outside 
the  self  or  even  within  it.  For  a  result  must  de- 
pend on,  and  be  conditioned  by,  what  is  naturally 
given,  and  for  natural  defects  or  advantages  a  man 
is  not  responsible,  And  therefore,  so  far  as  regards 
true  morality,  any  realized  product  is  chance ;  for  it 
must  be  infected  and  modified,  less  or  more,  by  non- 
moral  conditions.  It  is,  in  short,  only  that  which 
comes  out  of  the  man  himself  which  can  justify  or 
condemn  him,  and  his  disposition  and  circumstances 
do  not  come  from  himself  Morality  is  the  identi- 
fication of  the  individual's  will  with  his  own  idea  of 
perfection.  The  moral  man  is  the  man  who  tries 
to  do  the  best  which  he  knows.  If  the  best  he 
knows  is  not  the  best,   that    is,   speaking   morally, 

'  This  view  of  morality  is  of  course  a  late  deveiopraent,  but  I 
do  not  propose  to  say  anything  on  its  origin.  With  regard  to 
the  origin  of  morality,  in  general,  I  will  only  say  this,  that  one 
may  lay  too  much  stress  on  its  directly  social  aspect.  Certainly 
to  isolate  the  individual  is  quite  indefensible.  But,  upon  the 
other  band,  it  is  wrong  to  make  the  sole  root  of  morality  consist 
in  the  direct  identification  of  the  individual  with  the  social  will. 
Morality,  as  we  have  remarked,  is  not  confined  to  that  in  its  end  ; 
and  in  the  same  way,  we  must  add,  it  is  not  merely  that  in  its 
beginning.  I  am  referring  here  to  the  facts  of  satf-esteem  and 
self-disapprobation,  or  the  satisfaction  or  dissatisfaction  of  a  crea- 
ture with  itself.  This  feeling  must  begin  when  that  creature  is 
able  10  form  an  idea  of  itself,  as  doing  or  enjoying  something 
desired,  and  can  bring  that  idea  into  relation  with  its  own  actual 
success  or  failure.  Tlie  dissatisfied  brooding  of  an  animal  that 
has,  for  example,  missed  its  prey,  is,  we  may  be  sure,  not  yet 
moral.  But  it  will  none  the  less  contain  in  rudiment  that  judg- 
ment of  one's  self  which  is  a  most  important  factor  of  morality. 
And  this  feeling  attaches  itself  indifferently  to  the  idea  of  every 
sort  of  action  or  performance,  success  in  whicli  is  desired.  If  I 
feel  or  consider  myself  to  correspond  with  such  an  idea,  I  am  at 
once  pleased  with  myself;  and,  even  if  it  is  only  for  luck  at  cards, 
I  approve  of  and  esteem  myself.  For  approbation,  as  we  saw,  is 
not  all  moral ;  nor  is  it,  even  in  its  origin,  all  directly  social. 
But  this  subject  deserves  treatment  at  a  length  which  here  is 
impossible. 


432 


REALITV. 


beside  the  question.  If  he  fails  to  accomplish  it, 
and  ends  in  an  attempt,  that  is  once  more  morally 
irrelevant.  And  hence  (we  may  add)  it  will  be 
hard  to  find  a  proper  sense  in  which  different 
epochs  can  be  morally  compared,  or  in  which  the 
morality  of  one  time  or  person  stands  above  that  of 
others.  For  the  intensity  of  a  volitional  identifica- 
tion with  whatever  seems  best  appears  to  contain 
and  to  exhaust  the  strict  essence  of  goodness.  On 
this  alone  are  based  moral  responsibility  and  desert, 
and  on  this,  perhaps,  we  are  enabled  to  build  our 
one  hope  of  immortality. 

This  is  a  view  towards  which  morality  seems 
driven  irresistibly.  That  a  man  is  to  be  judged 
solely  by  his  inner  will  seems  in  the  end  undeniable. 
And,  if  such  a  doctrine  contradicts  itself  and  is  in- 
consistent with  the  very  notion  of  goodness,  that 
will  be  another  indication  that  the  good  is  but  ap- 
pearance. We  may  even  say  that  the  present  view 
takes  a  pride  in  its  own  discrepancies.  It  might, 
we  must  allow,  contradict  itself  more  openly.  For 
it  might  make  morality  consist  in  the  direct  denial 
of  that  very  element  of  existence,  without  which  it 
actually  is  nothing.'  But  the  same  inconsistency, 
if  more  veiled,  is  still  inherent  in  our  doctrine.  For 
a  will,  after  all,  must  do  something  and  must  be 
characterized  by  what  it  does  ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  this  very  character  of  what  it  does  must  de- 
pend on  that  which  is  "given  "  to  it.  And  we  shall 
have  to  choose  between  two  fatal  results ;  for  either 
it  will  not  matter  what  one  does,  or  else  something 
beyond  and  beside  the  bare  "  will  "  must  be  ad- 
mitted to  be  good. 

I  will  begin  by  saying  a  few  words  on  what  is 
called  "moral  desert."  If  this  phrase  implies  that 
for  either  good  or  bad  there  is  any  reward  beyond 
themselves,  it  is  at  once  inconsistent.     For,  if  be- 

'  Ethical  Studies,  Essay  IV. 


GOODNESS.  433 

tween  virtue  and  happiness  there  is  an  essential 
connection,  then  virtue  must  be  re-defined  so  as  to 
take  in  all  its  essence.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  connection  is .  but  external,  then  in  what  proper 
sense  are  we  to  call  it  moral  ?  We  must  either  give 
up  or  alter  the  idea  of  desert,  or  else  must  seriously 
modify  our  extreme  conception  of  moral  goodness. 
And  with  this  I  will  proceed  to  show  how  in  its 
working  that  conception  breaks  down. 

It  is,  first,  in  ilat  contradiction  with  ordinary 
morality.  I  am  not  referring  to  the  fact  that  in 
common  life  we  approve  of  all  human  qualities 
which  to  us  seem  desirable.  Beautv.  riches,  strent-th, 
health  and  fortune — everything,  and,  perhaps,  more 
than  everything,  which  could  be  called  a  human  ex- 
cellence— we  find  admirable  and  approve  of.  But 
such  approbations,  together  with  their  counterpart 
disapprovals,  we  should  probably  find  ourselves 
unwilling  to  justify  morally.  And,  passing  this  point 
by  for  the  present,  let  us  attend  solely  to  those 
excellencies  which  would  by  all  be  called  moral. 
These,  the  common  virtues  of  life  by  which  indi- 
viduals are  estimated,  obviously  depend  to  a  large 
extent  on  disposition  and  bringing  up.  And  to 
discard  them  utterly,  because,  or  in  so  far  as,  you 
cannot  attribute  them  to  the  individual's  will,  is  a 
violent  paradox.  Even  if  that  is  correct,  it  is  at 
least  opposed  to  every-day  morality. 

And  this  doctrine,  when  we  examine  it  further,  is 
found  to  end  in  nothing.  Its  idea  is  to  credit  a  man 
merely  with  what  comes  out  of  his  will,  and  that  in 
fine  is  not  anything.  For  in  the  result  from  the 
will  there  is  no  material  which  is  not  derived  from 
a  "  natural "  source ;  and  the  whole  result,  whether 
in  its  origin,  its  actual  happening,  or  its  end,  is 
throughout  conditioned  and  qualified  by  "  natural  " 
factors.  The  moral  man  is  allowed  not  to  be 
omnipotent  or  omniscient.  He  is  morally  perfect, 
if  only  he  will  but  do  what  he  knows.     But  how 

A.  R.  -  F   V 


434 


REALITY. 


can  he  do  it  when  weakness  and  disease,  either 
bodily  or  mental,  opposes  his  effort  ?  And  how 
can  he  even  make  the  effort,  except  on  the 
strenjTth  of  some  "natural"  gift  ?  Such  an  idea  is 
psychologically  absurd.  And,  if  we  take  two 
different  individuals,  one  dowered  with  advantages 
external  and  inward,  and  the  other  loaded  with 
corresponding  drawbacks,  and  if,  in  judging  these, 
we  refuse  to  make  the  very  smallest  allowance — in 
what  have  we  ended  ?  But  to  make  an  allowance 
would  be  to  give  up  the  essence  of  our  doctrine,  for 
the  moral  man  no  longer  would  be  bart-lv  the  man 
who  wills  what  he  knows.  The  result  then  is  that 
we  are  unable  to  judge  morally  at  all,  for,  otherwise, 
we  shall  be  crediting  morality  with  a  foreign  gift  or 
allowance.  Nor,  again,  do  we  find  a  less  difficulty, 
when  we  turn  to  consider  moral  knowledge.  For 
one  man  by  education  or  nature  will  know  better 
than  another,  and  certainly  no  one  can  possibly 
know  always  the  best.'  But,  once  more,  we  cannot 
allow  fur  this,  and  must  insist  that  it  is  morally 
irrelevant.  In  short,  it  matters  nothing  what  any 
one  knows,  and  we  have  just  seen  that  it  matters  as 
little  what  any  one  does.  The  distinction  between 
evil  and  good  has  in  fact  disappeared.  And  to  fall 
back  on  the  intensity  of  the  moral  struggle  will  not 
help  us.*  For  that  intensity  is  determined,  in  the 
first  place,  by  natural  conditions,  and,  in  the  next 
place,  goodness  would  be  taken  to  consist  in  a 
struggle  with  itself.  To  make  a  man  better  you 
would  in  some  cases  have  to  add  to  his  badness,  in 
order  to  increase  the  division  and  the  morality  within 
him.     Goodness,  in  short,   meant  at  the  beginning 

1  On  the  common  Hedonistic  view  we  may  say  that  he  never 
can  hope  to  do  this,  or  know  when  he  has  done  it.  What  it 
would  call  "  objective  Tightness "  seems  in  the  end  to  be  not 
ascertainable  humanly,  or  else  to  be  the  Ojtinion  of  the  subject, 
however  wrong  that  may  be.  liut  an  intelligent  view  of  the 
connection  between  goodness  and  truth  is  not  a  thing  which  we 
need  expect  from  common  Hedonism  (p.  407). 

*  Cp.  Ethical  Studies,  pp.  213-217. 


GOODNESS. 


435 


that  one  dots  what  one  can,  and  it  has  come  now 
to  mean  merely  that  one  does  what  one  does.  Or 
rather,  whatever  one  does  and  whatever  one  wills, 
it  is  all  alike  infected  by  nature  and  morally  indiffer- 
ent. There  is,  in  plain  words,  no  difference  left 
between  goodness  and  badness. 

But  such  a  conclusion,  we  may  possibly  yet  be 
told,  is  quite  mistaken.  For,  thougli  all  the  matter 
of  goodness  must  be  drawn  from  outside,  yet  the 
self,  or  the  will,  has  a  power  of  appropriation.  By 
its  formal  act  it  works  up  and  transforms  that  given 
matter,  and  it  so  makes  its  own,  and  makes  moral, 
the  crude  natural  stuff.  Siill,  on  the  other  side, 
we  must  insist  that  every  act  is  a  resultant  from 
psychical  conditions.'  A  formal  act,  which  is  not 
determined  by  its  matter,  is  nonsense,  whether 
you  consider  that  act  in  its  origin  or  in  its  out- 
come. And,  again,  if  the  act  is  not  morally  charac- 
terized and  judged  by  its  matter,  will  there  in  the 
end  be  a  difference  between  the  good  and  the  bad  } 
Whether  you  look  at  its  psychical  genesis  or  at  its 
essential  character,  the  act,  if  it  is  to  be  possible, 
cannot  be  merely  formal,  and  it  will  therefore  vitally 
depend  on  that  which  has  been  called  non-moral. 

A  form  independent  of  matter  is  certainly  nothing, 
and,  as  certainly  therefore,  it  cannot  be  morality. 
It  can  at  most  be  offered  as  such,  and  asserted  to 
be  so,  by  a  chance  content  which  fills  it  and  pro- 
fesses" to  be  moral.     Morality  has  degenerated  into 

'  This  would  be  denied  by  what  is  vulgarly  called  Free  Will. 
Thai  attempts  to  make  the  self  or  will,  in  abstraction  from  con- 
crete conditions,  the  responsible  source  of  conduct.  As  however, 
taken  in  that  abstraction,  the  self  or  will  is  nothing,  "  Free  Will  " 
can  merely  mean  chance.  If  it  is  not  that,  its  advocates  are  at 
least  incapable  of  saying  what  else  it  is;  and  Ivow  chance  can 
assist  us  towards  being  responsible,  they  naturally  shrink  from 
discussing  (see  Ethical  Studies,  Essay  I.,  and  Mr.  Stephen's 
Science  of  Ethics,  pp.  282-3).  Considered  either  theoretically 
or  practically,  "  Free  Will "  is,  in  short,  a  mere  lingering  chinie:a. 
Certainly  no  writer,  who  respects  himself,  can  be  called  on  any 
longer  to  treat  it  sciiously  (p.  393). 


436 


reality; 


self-approbation   which    only  is    formal,   and    which 
therefore   is  false.      It  has  become  the  hollow  con- 
science   for   which    acts    are    good,    because    they 
happen  to  be  its  own,  or  merely  because  somehow 
it  happens   to  like   them.        Between  the  assertion 
and   the   fact  there  is  here   no  genuine  connection. 
It    is    empty   self-will    and    self-assurance,    which, 
swollen    with    private   sentinient   or   chance  desire, 
wears    the    mask    of  goodness,       And    hence    that 
which  professes  itself  moral  would  be  the  same  as 
mere  badness,  if  it  did  not  differ,  even  for  the  worse, 
by  the  addition  of  hypocrisy.'     For  the  bad,  which 
admits  that,  not  only  others,  but   that  itself  is  not 
good,  has,  in  principle  at  least,  condemned  vain  self- 
•sufficiency  and   self-will.      The  common  confession 
[that  the  self  in  itself  is  worthless,  has  opened  that 
[self  to  receive  worth  from  a  good  which  transcends 
it.     Morality  has  been  driven  to  allow  that  goodness 
'and  badness  do  not  wholly  depend   on    ourselves, 
and,  with  this  admission,  it   has  now  finally  passed 
I  beyond  itself.     We  must  at  last  have  come  to  the 
lend,  when  it  has  been   proclaimed  a  moral  duty  to 
Ibe  non-moral. 


That  it  is  a  moral  duty  not  to  be  moral  wears  the 
form  of  a  paradox,  but  it  is  the  expression  of  a 
principle  which  has  been  active  and  has  shown  itself 
throughout.  Every  separate  aspect  of  the  universe, 
if  you  insist  on  it,  goes  on  to  demand  something 
higher  than  itself.  And,  like  every  other  appearance, 
goodness  implies  that  which,  when  carried  out,  must 
absorb  it  Yet  goodness  cannot  go  back  ;  for  to 
identify  itself,  once  more,  with  the  earlier  stage  of 
its  development  would  be,  once  more,  to  be  driven 
forward  to  the  point  we  have  reached.  The  pro- 
blem can   be  solved  only  when   the  various  stages 

'  We  may  note  here  that  our  country,  the  chosen  land  of 
Moral  Philosophy,  has  the  reputation  abroad  of  being  the  chief 
home  of  hypocrisy  and  cant. 


GOODNESS. 


437 


and  appearances  of  morality  are  all  included  and 
subordinated  in  a  higher  form  of  being.  In  other 
words  the  end,  sought  for  by  morality,  is  above  it 
and  is  super-moral.  Let  us  gain  a  general  view  of 
the  moral  demands  which  call  for  satisfaction. 

The  first  of  these  is  the  suppression  of  the 
divorce  between  morality  and  goodness.  We  have 
seen  that  every  kind  of  human  excellence,  beauty, 
strength,  and  even  luck,  are  all  undeniably  good.  It 
is  idle  pretence  if  we  assert  that  such  gifts  are  not 
desired,  and  are  not  also  approved  of.  And  it  is  a 
moral  instinct  after  all  for  which  beauty  counts  as 
virtue.  For,  if  we  attempt  to  deny  this  and  to  con- 
fine virtue  to  what  is  commonly  called  moral  con- 
duct, our  position  is  untenable.  We  are  at  once 
hurried  forward  by  our  admitted  principle  into 
further  denials,  and  virtue  recedes  from  the  world 
until  it  ceases  to  be  virtue.  It  seeks  an  inward 
centre  not  vitiated  by  any  connection  with  the  e.x- 
lernal,  or,  in  other  words,  as  we  have  seen,  it  pur- 
sues the  unmeaning.  For  the  e.\cellence,  which 
barely  is  inner,  is  nothing  at  all.  We  must  either 
allow  then  that  physical  excellencies  are  good,  or 
we  must  be  content  to  find  virtue  not  realized  any- 
where.' Hence  there  will  be  virtues  more  or  less 
outward,  and  less  or  more  inward  and  spiritual.  We 
must  admit  kinds  and  degrees  and  different  levels 
of  virtue.  And  morality  must  be  distinguished  as 
a  special  form  of  the  general  goodness.  It  will  be 
now  one  excellence  among  others,  neither  including 
them  all,  nor  yet  capable  of  a  divorced  and  inde- 
|)endent  existence.  Morality  has  proved  unreal 
unless  it  stands  on.  and  vitally  consists  in,  gifts 
naturally  good.     And  thus  we  have  been  forced  to 


'  If  we  take  such  a  virtue  as  courage,  and  deny  its  tnoral 
goodness  where  it  is  only  physical,  we  shall  be  forced  in  the  end 
to  deny  its  goodness  everywhere.  We  may  see,  again,  how  there 
may  be  viitues  which,  in  a  sense,  rise  above  mere  goodness. 
This  from  the  view  of  morality  proper  is  of  course  impossible. 


438 


REALITV. 


acknowledge  that  morality  is  a  gift ;  since,  if  the 
goodness  of  the  physical  virtues  is  denied,  there  is 
left,  at  last,  no  goodness  at  all.  Morality,  in  short, 
finds  it  essential  that  every  excellence  should  be 
good,  and  it  is  destroyed  by  a  division  between  its 
own  world  and  that  of  goodness. 

It  is  a  moral  demand  then  that  every  human 
excellence  should  genuinely  be  good,  while  at  the 
same  time  a  high  rank  should  be  reserved  for  the 
inner  life.  And  it  is  a  moral  demand  also  that  the 
good  should  be  victorious  throughout.  The  defects 
and  the  contradiction  in  every  self  must  be  removed, 
and  must  be  succeeded  by  perfect  harmony.  And, 
of  course,  all  evil  must  be  overruled  and  so  turned 
into  goodness.  But  the  demand  of  morality  has 
also  a  different  side.  For,  if  goodness  as  such  Is 
to  remain,  the  contradiction  cannot  quite  cease, 
since  a  discord,  we  saw,  was  essential  to  goodness. 
Thus,  if  there  is  to  be  morality,  there  cannot 
altogether  be  an  end  of  evil.  And,  so  again,  the 
two  aspects  of  self-assertion  and  of  self-sacrifice  will 
•  remain.  They  must  be  subordinated,  and  yet  they 
^^  .  must  not  have  entirely  lost  their  distinctive  characters. 
4  /  Morality  in  brief  calls  for  an  unattainable  unity  of 
its  aspect.s,  and,  in  it.s  search  for  this,  it  naturally  is 
led  beyond  itself  into  a  higher  form  of  goodness. 
It  ends  in  what  we  may  call  religion.' 

'  The  origm  of  religion  is  a  question  which  does  not  concern 
us  here.  Religion  ajipears  to  have  two  root.s,  fear  and  adnTtration 
or  ap|troval.  The  latter  need  not  be  taken  as  having  a  high  or 
moral  sense.  Wonder  or  curiosity  seems  not  to  be  religious, 
unless  it  is  in  the  service  of  these  other  feelings.  And,  of  the 
two  main  roots  of  religion,  one  will  be  more  active  at  one  time 
and  place,  and  the  other  at  another.  The  feelings  also  will 
attach  themselves  naturally  to  a  variety  of  objects.  To  enrjuire 
about  the  origin  of  religion,  as  if  that  origin  must  always  be  one, 
seems  fundamentally  erroneous. 

It  concerns  us  more  to  know  what  religion  now  means  among 
ourselves.  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  it  is  impossible  to 
answer  this  question,  unless  we  realize  that  religion,  in  the  end, 
has  more  meanings  than  one.     Part  of  this  variety  rests  no  doubt 


GOODNESS. 


439 


In  this  higher  mode  of  consciousness  I  am  not 
suggesting  that  a  full  solution  is  found.     For  religion 

on  mere  misunderstanding.  That  which  is  mainly  intellectual, 
or  mainly  xsihetic,  would  probably  be  admitted  in  the  end  to  full 
outside  religion.  Blu  we  come  at  last,  I  should  say,  to  a  stub- 
born discrepancy.  There  are  those  who  would  call  religious  any 
kind  of  practical  relation  to  the  "  other  world,"  or  to  the  super- 
sensible generally.  The  question,  for  instance,  as  to  life  after 
death,  or  as  to  the  possibility  of  communication  with  what  are 
called  "spirits,"  seems  lo  some  essentially  religious.  And  they 
might  deny  that  religious  feeling  can  exist  at  all  towards  an  object 
in  "our  world."  Another  set  of  minds  would  insist  that,  in  order 
lo  have  religion,  you  must  have  a  relation  of  a  special  and  par- 
ticular kind.  And  they  would  add  that,  where  you  have  this 
relation,  whether  lowartis  an  object  of  the  "  other  world  "  or  not, 
you  have  got  religion.  The  question  as  to  life  after  death,  or  as 
to  the  possibility  of  spirit-rajjping  or  witchcraft,  is  really  not  in 
itself  in  the  very  least  religious.  And  it  is  only,  they  woulil  urge, 
because/?/-  accidens  our  feelings  to  the  unseen  are  generally  (not 
always)  religious,  that  religion  has  been  [lartly  narrowed  and 
partly  extended  without  just  cause.  I  consider  this  latter  party 
to  be  wholly  right,  and  I  shall  disregard  from  this  point  forward 
the  opposing  view. 

What  then  in  general  is  religion  ?  I  take  it  to  be  a  fixed 
feeling  of  fear,  resignation,  admiration  or  approval,  no  matter 
what  may  be  the  object,  provided  only  that  this  feeling  reaches 
a  certain  strength,  and  is  qualified  by  a  certain  degree  of  reflec- 
tion. But  I  should  add,  at  once,  that  in  religion  fear  and  approval 
to  some  extent  must  always  combine.  We  must  in  religion  try 
to  please,  or  at  least  to  submit  our  wills  to,  the  object  which  is 
feared.  Tliat  conduct  towards  the  object  is  approved  of,  and 
that  approbation  tends  again  to  qualify  the  object.  On  the  other 
side  in  religion  approval  implies  devotion,  and  devotion  seems 
hardly  possible,  unless  there  is  some  fear,  if  only  the  fear  of 
estrangement. 

But  in  what  degree  must  such  a  feeling  be  present,  if  we  are  to 
call  it  religion  ?  Can  the  point  be  fixed  exactly?  I  think  we 
must  admit  that  it  cannot  be.  But  it  lies  generally  there  where 
we  feel  that  our  proper  selves,  in  comparison,  are  quite  powerless 
or  worthless.  The  object,  over  against  which  we  find  ourselves  to 
be  of  no  account,  tends  to  inspire  us  with  religion.  If  there  arc 
many  such  objects,  we  are  polytlieists.  But  if,  in  comparison 
with  one  only,  all  the  rest  have  no  weight,  we  have  arrived  at 
monotheism. 

Hence  any  object,  in  regard  to  which  we  feel  a  supreme  fear  or 
approval,  will  engage  our  devotion,  and  be  for  us  a  Deity.  And 
this  object,  most  emphatically,  in  no  other  sense  need  possess 


440 


REALITY. 


is  practical,  and  therefore  still  is  dominated  by  the 
idea  of  the  Good  ;  and  in  the  essence  of  this  idea  is 
contained  an  unsolved  contradiction.  Religion  is  still 
forced  to  maintain  unreduced  aspects,  which,  as  such, 
cannot  be  united  ;  and  it  exists  in  short  by  a  kind 
of  perpetual  oscillation  and  compromise.  Let  us 
however  see  the  manner  in  which  it  rises  above 
bare  morality. 

/  For  religion  all  is  the  perfect  expression  of  a 
/supreme  will,'  and  all  thine;s  therefore  are  good. 
I  Everything  imperfect  and  evil,  the  conscious  bad 
will  itself,  is  taken  up  into  and  subserves  this  absol- 
ute end.  Both  goodness  and  badness  are  therefore 
good,  just  as  in  the  end  falsehood  and  truth  were 
each  found  to  be  true.  They  are  good  alike,  but 
on  the  other  hand  they  are  not  good  equally.  That 
which  is  evil  is  transmuted  and,  as  such,  is  de- 
stroyed, while  the  good  in  various  degrees  can  still 
preserve  its  own  character.  Goodness,  like  truth, 
we  saw  was  supplemented  rather  than  wholly  over- 
ruled. And,  in  measuring  degrees  of  goodness,  we 
must  bear  in  mind  the  double  aspect  of  appearance, 
and  the  ultimate  identity  of  intenseness  and  extent. 
\But  in  religion,  further,  the  finite  self  does  attain  its 

divinity.  It  is  a  common  phrase  in  life  that  one  may  make  a  God 
of  this  or  that  person,  oliject,  or  pursuit  ;  and  in  such  a  case  our 
attitude,  it  seems  lo  me,  must  he  called  religious.  This  is  the  case 
often,  for  example,  in  sexual  or  in  parental  love.  But  to  fix  ihe 
exact  point  at  which  religion  begins,  and  where  it  ends,  would 
hardly  be  possible. 

In  this  chapter  lam  taking  religion  only  in  its  highest  sense. 
I  am  using  it  for  devotion  to  the  one  perfect  object  which  is 
utterly  good.  Incomplete  forms  of  religion,  such  as  the  devotion 
to  a  woman  or  to  a  j)ursuit,  can  exist  side  by  side.  But  in  this 
highest  sense  of  religion  there  cm  be  but  one  object.  And  again, 
when  religion  is  fully  developed,  this  object  must  be  good.  For 
towards  anything  else,  although  we  feared  it,  «e  should  now  enter- 
lain  feelings  of  revolt,  of  dislike,  and  even  of  contempt.  There 
would  not  any  longer  be  that  moral  prostration  which  is  implied 
in  all  religion. 

'  As  to  the  ultimate  Iruih  of  this  belief,  see  the  following 
chapter. 


GOODNESS. 


44 « 


perfection,  and  the  separation  of  these  two  aspects  is 
superseded  and  overcome.  The  finite  self  is  perfect, 
not  merely  when  it  is  viewed  as  an  essential  organ 
of  the  perfect  Whole,  but  it  also  realizes  for  itself 
and  is  aware  of  perfection.  The  belief  that  its  evil 
is  overruled  and  its  good  supplemented,  the  identity 
in  knowledge  and  in  desire  with  the  one  overmaster- 
ing perfection,  this  for  the  finite  being  is  self  con- 
sciousness of  itself  as  perfect.  And  in  the  others  it 
finds  once  more  the  same  perfection  realized.  I'^or 
where  a  whole  is  complete  in  finite  beings,  which 
know  themselves  to  be  elements  and  members  of  its 
system,  tliis  ts  the  consciousness  in  such  individuals 
of  their  own  completeness.  Their  perfection  is  a 
gift  without  doubt,  but  there  is  no  reality  outside 
the  giver,  and  the  separate  receiver  of  the  gift  is  but 
a  false  a[jpearance. 

But.  on  the  other  hand,  religion  must  not  pass 
wholly  beyond  goodness,  and  it  therefore  still  main- 
tains the  opposition  required  for  practice.  Only  by 
doing  one's  best,  only  by  the  union  of  one's  will  with 
the  Good,  can  one  attain  to  perfection.  In  so  far  as 
this  union  is  absent,  the  evil  remains  ;  and  to  re- 
main evil  is  to  be  overruled,  and,  as  such,  to  perish 
utterly.  Hence  ihe'ideal  perfection  of  the  self  serves 
to  increase  its  hostility  towards  its  own  imperfection 
and  evil.  The  self  at  once  struggles  to  be  perfect, 
Vand  knows  at  the  same  time  that  its  consummation 
is  already  worked  out.  The  moral  relation  survives 
as  a  subordinate  but  an  effective  aspect. 

The  moral  duty  not  to  be  moral  is,  in  short,  the 
duty  to  be  religious.  Every  human  excellence  for 
religion  is  good,  since  it  is  a  manifestation  of  the 
reality  of  the  supreme  Will.  Only  evil,  as  such,  is 
not  good,  since  in  its  evil  character  it  is  absorbed; 
and  in  that  character  it  really  i.s,  we  may  say.  some- 
thing else.  Evil  a.ssuredly  contributes  to  the  good 
of  the  whole,  but  it  contributes  something  which  in 
that  whole  is  quite  transformed  from  its  own  nature. 


442 


REALITY. 


And  while  in  badness  itself  there  are,  in  one  sense, 
no  defjrees,  there  are,  in  another  sense,  certainly  de- 
grees in  that  which  is  bad.  In  the  same  way  religion 
preserves  intact  degrees  and  differences  in  goodness. 
Every  individual,  in  so  far  as  he  is  good,  is  perfect. 
But  he  is  better,  first  in  proportion  to  his  contribu- 
tion to  existing  excellence,  and  he  is  better,  again, 
according  as  more  intensely  he  identifies  his  will 
with  all-perfecting  goodness. 

I  have  set  out,  baldly  and  in  defective  outline,  the 
claim  of  religion  to  have  removed  contradiction  from 
the  Good.  And  we  must  consider  now  to  what 
extent  such  a  claim  can  be  justified.  Religion  seems 
to  have  included  and  reduced  to  harmony  every 
aspect  of  life.  It  appears  to  be  a  whole  which  has 
embraced,  and  which  pervades,  every  detail.  But 
in  the  end  we  are  forced  to  admit  that  the  contradic- 
tion remains.  For,  if  the  whole  is  still  good,  it  is 
not  harmonious  ;  and,  if  it  has  gone  beyond  good- 
ness, it  has  carried  us  also  beyond  religion.  The 
whole  is  at  once  actually  to  be  good,  and,  at  the 
.same  lime,  is  actually  to  make  itself  good.  Neither 
its  perfect  goodness,  not  yet  its  struggle,  may  be 
degraded  to  an  appearance.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
to  unite  these  two  aspects  consistently  is  impossible. 
And,  even  if  the  object  of  religion  is  taken  to  be 
imperfect  and  finite,  the  contradiction  will  remain. 
For  if  the  end  desired  by  devotion  were  thoroughly 
accomplished,  the  need  for  devotion  and,  therefore. 
its  reality  would  have  ceased.  In  short,  a  self  other 
than  the  object  must,  ."ind  must  not,  survive,  a  vital 
discrepancy  to  be  found  again  in  intense  sexual  love. 
Every  form  of  the  good  is  impelled  from  within  to 
pass  beyond  its  own  essence.  It  is  an  appearance, 
the  stability  of  which  is  maintained  by  oscillation, 
and  the  acceptance  of  which  depends  largely  on 
compromise. 

The  central  point  of  religion  lies  in  what  is  called 


GOODNESS. 


443 


faith.  The  whole  and  the  individual  are  perfect  and 
good'for  faith  only.  Now  faith  is  not  mere  holding 
a  general  truth,  which  in  detail  is  not  verified  ;  for 
that  attitude,  of  course  also,  belongs  to  theory.  Faith 
.is  practical,  and  it  is,  in  short,  a  making  believe TBut."" 
because  it  is  practical,  it  is  at  the  same  time  a  making, 
none  the  less,  as  if  one  did  fwi  believe.  Its  maxim 
is.  Be  sure  that  opposition  to  the  good  is  overcome, 
and  nevertheless  act  as  if  it  were  there  ;  or,  Because 
it  is  tiot  really  there,  have  more  courage  to  attack  it. 
And  such  a  maxim,  most  assuredly,  is  not  consistent 
with  itself;  for  either  of  its  sides,  if  taken  too  seriously, 
is  fatal  to  the  other  side.  This  inner  discrepancy 
however  pervades  the  whole  field  of  religion.  V\'e 
are  tempted  to  exemplify  it,  once  again,  by  the 
sexual  passion.  A  man  may  believe  in  his  mistress, 
may  feel  that  without  that  faith  he  could  not  live,  and 
may  find  it  natural,  at  the  same  time,  unceasingly  to 
watch  her.  Or,  again,  when  he  does  not  believe  in 
her  or  perhaps  even  in  himself,  then  he  may  desire 
all  the  more  to  utter,  and  to  listen  to,  repeated  pro- 
fessions. The  same  form  of  self  deception  plays  its 
part  in  the  ceremonies  of  religion. 

This  criticism  might  naturally  be  pursued  into  in- 
definite detail,  but  it  is  sufficient  for  us  here  to  have 
established  the  main  principle.  The  religious  con- 
sciousness rests  on  the  felt  unity  of  unreduced  oppos- 
ites ;  and  either  to  combine  these  consistently,  or 
upon  the  other  hand  to  transform  them  is  impossible 
for  religion.  And  hence  self-contradiction  in  theory, 
and  oscillation  in  sentiment,  is  inseparable  from  its 
essence.  Its  dogmas  must  end  in  one-sided  error, 
or  else  in  senseless  compromise.  And,  even  in  its 
practice,  it  is  beset  with  two  imminent  dangers,  and 
it  has  without  clear  vision  to  balance  itself  between 
rival  abysses.  Religion  may  dwell  too  intently  on 
the  discord  in  the  world  or  in  the  self.  In  the 
former  case  it  foregoes  its  perfection  and  peace, 
while,    at   the    same    time,    it    may   none    the  less 


444 


REALITY. 


forget  the  difference  between  its  private  will  and 
the  Good.  And,  on  the  other  side,  if  it  emphas- 
izes this  latter  difference,  it  is  then  threatened 
with  a  lapse  into  bare  morality.  But  again  if,  fly- 
ing from  the  discord,  religion  keeps  its  thought  fixed 
on  harmony,  it  tends  to  suffer  once  more.  For, 
finding  that  all  is  already  good  both  in  the  self  and 
in  the  world,  it  may  cease  to  be  moral  at  all,  and 
becomes  at  once,  therefore,  irreligious.  The  truth 
that  devotion  even  to  a  finite  object  may  lift  us  above 
moral  laws,  seduces  religion  into  false  and  immoral 
perversions.  Because,  for  it,  all  reality  is,  in  one 
sense,  good  alike,  every  action  may  become  com- 
pletely indifferent.  It  idly  dreams  its  life  away  in 
the  quiet  world  of  divine  inanity,  or,  forced  into  ac- 
tion by  chance  desire,  it  may  hallow  every  practice, 
however  corrupt,  by  its  empty  spirit  of  devotion. 
And  here  we  find  reproduced  in  a  direr  form  the 
monstrous  births  of  moral  h\'pocrisy.  But  we  need 
not  enter  into  the  pathology  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness. The  man  who  has  passed,  however 
little,  behind  the  scenes  of  the  religious  life,  must 
liave  had  liis  moments  of  revolt.  He  must  have 
been  forced  to  doubt  if  the  bloody  source  of  so  many 
open  crimes,  the  parent  of  such  inward  pollution  can 
possibly  be  good. 

But  if  religion  is,  as  we  have  seen,  a  necessity, 
such  a  doubt  may  be  dismissed.  There  would  be, 
in  the  end  perhaps,  no  sense  in  the  enquiry  if  religion 
has,  on  the  whole,  done  more  harm  than  good.  My 
object  has  been  to  point  out  that,  like  morality,  re- 
ligion Is  not  ultimate.  It  is  a  mere  appearance,  and 
is  therefore  inconsistent  with  itself.  And  it  is  hence 
liable  on  every  side  to  shift  beyond  its  own  limits. 
But  when  religion,  balancing  itself  between  extremes, 
has  lost  its  balance  on  either  hand,  it  becomes  irre- 
ligious. If  it  was  a  moral  duty  to  find  more  than 
morality  in  religion,  it  is,  even  more  emphatically,  a 
religious  duty  still  to  be  moral.      But  each  of  these  is 


GOODNESS. 


445 


a  mode  and  an  expression  at  difTerent  stages  of  the 
good;  and  the  good,  as  we  have  found,  is  a  self- 
contradictory  appearance  of  the  Absolute. 

It  may  be  instructive  to  bring  out  the  same  incon- 
sistency from  another  point  of  view.  Religion 
naturally  implies  a  relation  between  Man  and  God. 
Now  a  relation  always  {we  have  seen  throughout)  is 
self- contradictory.  It  implies  always  two  terms 
which  are  finite  and  which  claim  independence.  On 
the  other  hand  a  relation  is  unmeaning,  unless  both 
itself  and  the  relateds  are  the  adjectives  of  a  whole. 
And  to  find  a  solution  of  this  discrepancy  would  be 
to  pass  entirely  beyond  the  relational  point  of  view. 
This  general  conclusion  may  at  once  be  verified  in 
the  sphere  of  religion. 

Man  is  on  the  one  hand  a  finite  subject,  who  is 
over  against  God,  and  merely  "standing  in  relation." 
And  yet,  upon  the  other  hand,  apart  from  God  man 
is  merely  an  abstraction.  And  religion  perceives 
this  truth,  and  it  affirms  that  man  is  good  and  real 
only  through  grace,  or  that  again,  attempting  to  be 
independent,  he  perishes  through  wrath,  lie  does 
not  merely  "  stand  in  relation,"  but  is  moved  inly 
by  his  opposite,  and  indeed,  apart  from  that  inward 
working,  could  nnt  stand  at  all.  God  again  is  a 
finite  object,  standing  above  and  apart  from  man, 
and  is  something  independent  of  all  relation  to  his 
will  and  intelligence.  Hence  God,  if  taken  as  a 
thinking  and  feeling  being,  has  a  private  personality. 
But,  sundered  from  those  relations  which  qualify 
him,  God  is  inconsistent  emptiness ;  and,  qualified 
by  his  relation  to  an  Other,  he  is  distracted  hnitude. 
God  is  therefore  taken,  again,  as  transcending  this 
external  relation.  He  wills  and  knuws  himself,  and 
he  finds  his  reality  and  self-consciousness,  in  union 
with  man.  Religion  is  therefore  a  process  with 
inseparable  factors,  each  appearing  on  either  side. 
It  is  the  unity  of  man  and  God,  which,  in  various 


446 


REALITY. 


Stages  and  forms,  wills  and  knows  itself  throuorhout. 
It  parts  itself  into  opposite  terms  with  a  relation  be- 
tween them  ;  but  in  the  same  breath  it  denies  this 
provisional  sundering,  and  it  asserts  and  feels  in 
either  term  the  inward  presence  of  the  other.  And 
so  religion  consists  in  a  practical  oscillation,  and  ex- 
presses itself  only  by  the  means  of  theoretical  com- 
promise. It  would  shrink  periiaps  from  the  statement 
that  God  loves  and  enjoys  himself  in  human  emo- 
tion, and  it  would  recoil  once  more  from  the  assertion 
that  love  can  be  where  God  is  not,  and,  striving  to 
hug  both  shores  at  once,  it  wavers  bewildered.  And 
sin  is  the  hostility  of  a  rebel  against  a  wrathful  Ruler. 
And  yet  this  whole  relation  too  must  feel  and  hate 
itself  in  the  sinner's  heart,  while  the  Ruler  also  is 
torn  and  troubled  by  conllicting  emotions.  But  to 
say  that  sin  is  a  necessary  element  in  the  Divine 
self-consciousness — an  element,  however,  emerging 
but  to  be  forthwith  absorbed,  and  never  liberated  as 
such — this  would  probably  appear  to  be  either  non- 
sense or  blasphemy.  Religion  prefers  to  put  forth 
statements  which  it  feels  are  untenable,  and  to  cor- 
rect them  at  once  by  counter-statements  which  it 
finds  are  no  better.  It  is  then  driven  forwards  and 
back  between  both,  like  a  dog  which  seeks  to  follow 
two  masters.  A  discrepancy  worth  our  notice  is  the 
position  of  God  in  the  universe.  We  may  say  that 
in  religion  God  tends  always  to  pass  beyond  him- 
self He  is  necessarily  led  to  end  in  the  Absolute, 
which  for  religion  is  not  God.  God,  whether  a 
"person"  or  not,  is,  on  the  one  hand,  a  finite  being 
and  an  object  to  man.  On  the  other  hand,  the  con- 
summation, sought  by  the  religious  consciousness,  is 
the  perfect  unity  of  these  terms.  And,  if  so,  nothing 
j  would  in  the  end  fall  outside  God.  But  to  take 
I  God  as  the  ceaseless  oscillation  and  changing  move- 
I  ment  of  the  process,  is  out  of  the  question.     On  the 

I  other  side  the  harmony  of  all  these  discords  demands, 
as  we  have  shown,  the  alteration  of  their  finite  char- 


GOODNESS. 


■447 


acter.  The  unity  implies  a  complete  suppression  of 
the  relation,  as  such  ;  but,  with  that  suppression,  re- 
|ligion  and  the  good  have  altogether,  as  such,  dis- 
appeared. If  you  identify  the  Absolute  with  God, 
\that  is  not  the  God  of  religion.  If  again  you  separ- 
ate them,  God  becomes  a  finite  factor  in  the  Whole. 
And  the  effort  of  religion  is  to  put  an  end  to,  and 
break  down,  this  relation — a  relation  which,  none  the 
less,  it  essentially  presupposes.  Hence,  short  of  the 
Absolute,  God  cannot  rest,  and,  having  reached  that 
goal,  he  is  lost  and  religion  with  him.  It  is  this 
difficulty  which  appears  in  the  problem  of  the  reli- 
gious self-consciousness.  God  must  certainly  be  con- 
.scious  of  himself  in  religion,  but  sucli  .self-conscious- 
ness is  most  imperfect.'     For  if  the  external  relation 


*  The  two  cvtremes  in  the  human-divine  self-consciousness 
c.innot  wliolly  unite  in  one  concordant  self.  It  is  interesting 
lo  compare  such  expressions  as — 


and 

and 

with 


"  I  am  the  eye  with  which  the  Universe 
Beliolds  itself  and  knows  itself  divine," 

"  They  reckon  ill  who  leave  nae  out ; 
When  me  they  fly,  I  am  the  wings  ; 
I  am  the  doubter  aud  the  doubt, 
And  I  the  hymn  the  Brahmin  sings," 

"  Die  Sehnsucht  du,  und  was  sie  stillt," 

Ne  suis-je  pas  un  faux  accord 
Dans  la  divine  symphonic, 
Grace  k  la  vorace  Ironie 
Qui  me  secoue  et  qui  me  mord  ? 

Elle  est  dnns  ma  voix,  la  criarde  ! 
C'est  tout  mon  sang,  ce  poison  noir ! 
Je  suis  le  sinistre  miroir 
Oil  la  meg^re  se  regarde  1 

Je  suis  la  plaie  et  le  couteau  ! 
Je  suis  ie  sourflet  et  la  joue  1 
Je  suis  les  membres  et  la  roue, 
Et  la  victime  et  le  lourreau  ! 


448 


REALITY. 


between  God  and  man  were  entirely  absorbed,  the 
separation  of  subject  and  object  would,  as  sucii,  have 
gone  with  it.  But  if  again  the  self,  which  is  con- 
scious, still  contains  in  its  essence  a  relation  between 
two  unreduced  terms,  where  is  the  unity  of  its  self- 
ness  ?  In  short,  God,  as  the  highest  expression  of 
the  realized  good,  shows  the  contradiction  which  we 
found  to  be  inherent  in  that  principle.  The  falling 
apart  of  idea  and  e.xistence  is  at  once  essential  to 
goodness  and  negated  by  Reality.  And  the  process, 
which  moves  within  Reality,  is  not  Reality  itself.  We 
may  say  that  God  is  not  God,  till  he  has  become  all 
in  all,  and  that  a  God,  which  is  all  in  all,  is  not  the 
God  of  religion.  God  is  but  an  aspect,  and  that 
must  mean  but  an  appearance,  of  the  Absolute. 

Through  the  remainder  of  this  chapter  I  will  try 
to  remove  some  misunderstandings.  The  first  I 
have  to  notice  is  the  old  confusion  as  to  matter  of 
fact ;  and  I  will  here  partly  repeat  the  conclusions 
of  our  foregoing  chapters.  If  religion  is  appearance, 
then  the  self  and  God,  I  shall  be  told,  are  illusions, 
since  tliey  will  not  be  facts.  This  is  the  prejudice 
which  everywhere  Common  Sense  opposes  to  philo- 
sophy. Common  Sense  is  persuaded  that  the  first 
rude  way,  in  which  it  interprets  phenomena,  is 
ultimate  truth  ;  and  neither  reasoning,  nor  the  cease- 
less protests  of  its  own  daily  experience,  can  shake 
its  assurance.  But  we  have  seen  that  this  persuasion 
rests  on  barbarous  error.  Certainly  a  man  knows 
and  experiences  everywhere  the  ultimate  Reality, 
and  indeed  is  able  to  know  and  experience  nothing 
else.  But  to  know  it  or  experience  it,  fully  and  as 
such,  is  a  thing  utterly  impossible.  For  the  whole 
of  finite  being  and  knowledge  consists  vitally  in 
appearance,  in  the  alienation  of  the  two  aspects  of 
existence  and  content.  So  that,  if  facts  are  to  be 
ultimate  and  real,  there  are  no  facts  anywhere  or  at 
all.      There  will  be  one  single  fact,   which  is  the 


GOODNESS. 


449 


Absolute.  But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  facts  are  to 
stand  for  actual  finite  events,  or  for  things  the  essence 
of  which  is  to  be  confined  to  a  here  or  a  now — facts 
are  then  the  lowest,  and  the  most  untrue,  form  of 
appearance.  And  in  the  commonest  business  of  our 
lives  we  rise  above  this  low  level.  Hence  it  is 
facts  themselves  which,  in  this  sense,  should  be  called 
illusory. 

In  the  religious  consciousness,  especially,  we  are 
not  concerned  with  such  facts  as  these.  Its  facts,  if 
pure  inward  experiences,  are  surcharged  with  a 
content,  which  is  obviously  incapable  of  confinement 
within  a  here  or  a  now.  And,  in  the  seeming  con- 
centration within  one  moment  of  all  Hell  or  all 
Heaven,  the  incompatibility  of  our  "fact  "  with  its 
own  existence  is  forced  on  our  view.  The  same 
truth  holds  of  all  external  religious  events.  These 
are  not  religious  until  they  have  a  significance  which 
transcends  their  sensible  fmitude.  And  the  general 
question  is  not  whether  the  relation  of  God  to  man 
is  an  appearance,  since  there  is  no  relation,  nor  any 
fact,  which  can  possibly  be  more.  The  question  is, 
where  in  the  world  of  appearance  is  such  a  fact  to 
be  ranked.  What,  in  other  words,  is  the  degree  of 
its  reality  and  truth  } 

To  enter  fully  into  such  an  enquiry  is  impossible 
here.  If  however  we  apply  the  criterion  gained  in 
the  preceding  chapter,  we  can  see  at  once  that  there 
is  nothing  more  real  than  what  comes  in  religion. 
To  compare  facts  such  as  these  with  what  is  given 
to  us  in  outward  existence,  would  be  to  trifle  with 
the  subject.  The  man,  who  demands  a  reality 
more  solid  than  that  of  the  religious  consciousness, 
seeks  he  does  not  know  what.  Dissatisfied  with  the 
reality  of  man  and  God  as  he  finds  them  there  in 
experience,  he  may  be  invited  to  state  intelligibly 
what  in  the  end  would  content  him.  For  God  and 
man,  as  two  sensible  existences,  would  be  degraded 
past  recognition.     We  may  say  that  the  God,  which 

A.  R.  G  G 


45° 


REALITY. 


could  exist,  would  most  assuredly  be  no  God.  And 
man  and  God  as  two  realities,  individual  and  ultim- 
ate, "  standing "  one  cannot  tell  where,  and  with 
a  relation  "  between  "  them — this  conjunction,  we 
have  seen,  is  self-contradictory,  and  is  therefore  ap- 
pearance. It  is  a  confused  attempt  to  seize  and  hold 
in  religion  that  Absolute,  which,  if  it  really  were 
attained,  would  destroy  religion.'  And  this  attempt, 
by  its  own  inconsistency,  and  its  own  failure  and 
unrest,  reveals  to  us  once  more  that  religion  is  not 
final  and  ultimate. 

But,  if  so,  what,  I  may  be  asked,  is  the  result  in 
practice  .■*  That,  I  reply  at  once,  is  not  my  business; 
and  insistence  on  such  a  question  would  rest  on  a 
hurtful  prejudice.  The  task  of  the  metaphysician 
is  to  enquire  into  ultimate  truth,  and  he  cannot  be 
called  on  to  consider  anything  else,  however  im- 
portant it  may  be.  We  have  but  little  jiotion  in 
England  of  freedom  either  in  art  or  in  science.^ 
Irrelevant  appeals  to  practical  results  are  allowed  to 
make  themselves  heard  And  in  certain  regions  of  art 
and  science,  this  sin  brings  its  own  punishment ;  for 
we  fail  through  timidity  and  through  a  want  of  single- 
ness and  sincerity.  That  a  man  should  treat  of  God 
and  religion  in  order  merely  to  understand  them,  and 
apart  from  the  influence  of  some  other  consideration 
and  inducement,  is  to  many  of  us  in  part  unintelligible, 
and  in  part  also  shocking.  And  hence  English 
thought  on  these  subjects,  where  it  has  not  studied  in 
a  foreign  school,  is  theoretically  worthless.  On  my 
own  mind  the  fefiect  of  this  prejudice  is  personally 
deterrent.  If  to  show  theoretical  interest  in  morality 
and  religion  is  taken  as  the  setting  oneself  up  as  a 
teacher  or  preacher,  I  would  rather  leave  these  sub- 

*  It  leads  to  the  dilemma,  If  God  is,  I  am  not,  and,  if  I  am, 
God  is  not.  We  have  not  reached  a  true  view  until  the  opposite 
of  this  becomes  self-evident.  Then  without  hesitation  we  answer 
that  God  is  not  himself,  tmless  I  also  am,  and  that,  if  God  were 
not,  1  certainly  should  be  nothing. 


GOODNESS.  45 1 

jects  to  whoever  feels  that  such  a  character  suits  him. 
And,  if  I  have  touched  on  them  here,  it  was  because 
I  could  not  help  it. 

And,  having  said  so  much,  perhaps  it  would  be 
better  if  I  said  no  more.  But  with  regard  to  the 
practical  question,  since  I  refuse  altogether  to  answer 
it,  I  may  perhaps  safely  try  to  point  out  what  this 
question  is.  It  is  clear  that  religion  must  have  some 
doctrine,  however  little  that  may  be,  and  it  is  clear 
again  that  such  doctrine  will  not  be  ultimate  truth. 
And  by  many  it  is  apparently  denied  that  anything 
less  can  suffice.  If  however  we  consider  the  sciences 
we  find  them  too  in  a  similar  position.  l*or  their 
first  principles,  as  we  have  seen,  are  in  the  end  self- 
contradictory.  Their  principles  are  but  partially 
true,  and  yet  are  valid,  because  they  will  work.  And 
why  then,  we  may  ask,  are  such  working  ideas  not 
enough  for  religion  ?  There  are  several  serious 
difficulties,  but  the  main  difficulty  appears  to  be  this. 
In  the  sciences  we  know,  for  the  most  part,  the  end 
which  we  aim  at ;  and,  knowing  this  end,  we  are 
able  to  test  and  to  measure  the  means.  But  in 
religion  it  is  precisely  the  chief  end  upon  which  we 
are  not  clear.  And,  on  the  basis  of  this  confused 
disagreement,  a  rational  discussion  is  not  possible. 
We  want  to  get  some  idea  as  to  the  doctrines  really 
requisite  for  religion  ;  and  we  begin  without  having 
examined  the  end  for  which  the  doctrines  are  required, 
and  by  which  obviously,  therefore,  they  must  be 
judged.  From  time  to  time  this  or  that  man  finds 
that  a  certain  belief,  or  set  of  beliefs,  seems  to 
lie  next  his  heart.  And  on  this  at  once  he  cries 
aloud  that,  if  these  particular  doctrines  are  not 
true,  all  religion  is  at  an  end.  And  this  is  what 
the  public  admires,  and  what  it  calls  a  defence  of 
religion. 

But  if  the  problem  is  to  be,  I  do  not  say  solved, 
but  discussed  rationally  at  all,  we  must  begin  by  an 
enquiry  into  the  essence  and  end  of  religion.     And 


452 


REALITY. 


to  that  enquiry,  I  presume,  there  are  two  things 
indispensable.  We  must  get  some  consistent  view 
as  to  the  general  nature  of  reality,  goodness,  and 
truth,  and  we  must  not  shut  our  eyes  to  the  historical 
facts  of  religion.  We  must  come,  first,  to  some  con- 
clusion about  the  purpose  of  religious  truths.  Do 
they  exist  for  the  sake  of  understanding,  or  do  they 
subserve  and  are  ancillary  to  some  other  object  ? 
And,  if  the  latter  is  true,  what  precisely  is  this  end 
and  object,  which  we  have  to  use  as  their  criterion  ? 
If  we  can  settle  this  point  we  can  then  decide  that 
religious  truths,  which  go  beyond  and  which  fall 
short  of  their  end,  possess  no  title  to  existence. 
If,  in  the  second  place  again,  we  are  not  clear 
about  the  nature  of  scientific  truth,  can  we  rationally 
deal  with  any  alleged  collision  between  religion 
and  science.  We  shall,  in  fact,  be  unable  to  say 
whether  there  is  any  collision  or  none  ;  or  again, 
supposing  a  conflict  to  exist,  we  shall  be  entirely  at 
a  loss  how  to  estimate  its  importance.  And  our 
result  so  far  is  this.  If  English  theologians  decline  to 
be  in  earnest  with  metaphysics,  they  must  obviously 
speak  on  some  topics,  I  will  not  say  ignorantly,  but 
at  least  without  having  made  a  serious  attempt  to 
gain  knowledge.  But  to  be  in  earnest  with  meta- 
physics is  not  the  affair  of  perhaps  one  or  two  years; 
nor  did  any  one  ever  do  anything  with  such  a  subject 
without  giving  himself  up  to  it  And,  lastly,  I  will 
explain  what  I  mean  by  attention  to  history.  If 
religion  is  a  practical  matter,  it  would  be  absurd 
wholly  to  disregard  the  force  of  continuous  occupancy 
and  possession.  But  history,  on  the  other  hand, 
supplies  teachings  of  a  different  order.  If,  in  the 
past  and  the  present,  we  find  religion  appearing  to 
flourish  in  the  absence  of  certain  particular  doctrines, 
it  is  not  a  light  step  to  proclaim  these  doctrines  as 
essential  to  religion.  And  to  do  this  without  dis- 
cussion and  dogmatically,  and  to  begin  one's  WQrk 
by  some  bald  assumption,  perhaps  about  the  necessity 


GOODNESS.  453 

of  a  "  personal  "  God,  is  to  trille  indecently  with  a 
subject  which  deserves  some  respect. 

What  is  necessary,  in  short,  is  to  begin  by  looking 
at  the  question  disinterestedly  and  looking  at  it  all 
round.  In  this  way  we  might  certainly  expect  to 
arrive  at  a  rational  discussion,  but  I  do  not  feel  any 
right  to  assume  that  we  should  ever  arrive  at  more. 
Perhaps  the  separation  of  the  accidental  from  the 
essential  in  religion  can  be  accomplished  only  by  a 
longer  and  a  ruder  process.  It  must  be  left,  perhaps, 
to  the  blind  competition  of  rival  errors,  and  to  the 
coarse  struggle  for  existence  between  hostile  sects. 
But  such  a  conclusion,  once  more,  should  not  be 
accepted  without  a  serious  trial.  And  this  is  all 
that  I  intend  to  say  on  the  practical  problem  of 
religion. 

I  will  end  this  chapter  with  a  word  of  warning 
against  a  dangerous  mistake.  We  have  seen  that 
religion  is  but  appearance,  and  that  it  cannot  be 
ultimate.  And  from  this  it  may  be  concluded, 
perhaps,  that  the  completion  of  religion  is  philosophy, 
and  that  in  metaphysics  we  reach  the  goal  in  which 
it  finds  its  consummation.  Now,  if  religion  essenti- 
ally were  knowledge,  this  conclusion  would  hold. 
And,  so  far  as  religion  involves  knowledge,  we  are 
again  bound  to  accept  it.  Obviously  the  business  of_ 
metaphysics  is  to  deal  with  ultimate  truth,  and  in  this 
respect,  obviously,  it  must  be  allowed  to  stand  higher 
than  religion.  But,  on  the  other  side,  wehavefoand 
that  the  essence  of  religion  is  not  knowledge.  And 
this  certainly  does  not  mean  that  its  essence  consists 
barely  in  feeling.  Religion  is  rather  the  attempt  tp^  ^..^Xw 
express  the  complete  reality  of  goodness  through 
every  aspect  of  our  being.  And,  so  far  as  this  goes, 
t  is  at  once  something  more,  and  therefore  some- 
thing higher,  than  philosophy. 

Philosophy,  as  we  shall  find  in  our  next  chapter, 
,s  itself  but  appearance.      It  is  but  one  appearance 


454  REALITY. 

among  others,  and,  if  it  rises  higher  in  one  respect, 
in  other  ways  it  certainly  stands  lower.  And  its 
weakness  lies,  of  course,  in  the  fact  that  it  is  barely 
theoretical.  Philosophy  may  be  made  more  un- 
doubtedly, and  incidentally  it  is  more  ;  but  its 
.essence  clearly  must  be  confined  to  intellectual 
activity.  It  is  therefore  but  a  one-sided  and  in- 
consistent appearance  of  the  Absolute.  -And,  so  far 
as  philosophy  is  religious,  to  that  extent  we  must 
allow  that  it  has  passed  into  religion,  and  has  ceased, 
as  such,  any  longer  to  be  philosophy.  I  do  not 
suggest  to  those  who,  dissatisfied  with  religious 
beliefs,  may  have  turned  seriously  to  metaphysics, 
that  they  will  not  find  there  what  they  seek.  But 
they  will  not  find  it  there,  or  anywhere  else,  unless 
they  have  brought  it  with  them.  Metaphysics  has 
no  special  connection  with  genuine  religion,  and 
neither  of  these  two  appearances  can  be  regarded 
as  the  perfection  of  the  other.  The  completion 
of  each  is  not  to  be  found  except  in  the  Absolute. 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 


THE  ABSOLUTE  AND  ITS  APPEARANCES. 


We  have  seen  now  that  Goodness,  like  Truth,  is  a 
one-sided  appearance.  Each  of  these  aspects,  when 
we  insist  on  it,  transcends  itself.  By  its  own  move- 
ment each  developes  itself  beyond  its  own  limits  and 
is  merged  in  a  higher  and  all-embracing  Reality. 
It  is  time  that  we  endeavoured  to  close  our  work 
by  explaining  more  fully  the  character  of  this  real 
unity.  We  have  certainly  not  attempted  to  do 
justice  to  the  various  spheres  of  phenomena.  •  The 
account  which  we  have  given  of  truth  and  goodness 
is  but  a  barren  outline,  and  this  was  the  case  before 
with  physical  Nature,  and  with  the  problem  of  the 
soul.  But  to  such  defects  we  must  resign  ourselves. 
For  the  object  of  this  volume  is  to  state  merely  a 
general  view  about  Reality,  and  to  defend  this  view 
against  more  obvious  and  prominent  objections. 
The  full  and  proper  defence  would  be  a  systematic 
account  of  all  the  regions  of  appearance,  for  it  is 
only  the  completed  system  which  in  metaphysics  is 
the  genuine  proof  of  the  principle.  But,  unable  to 
enter  on  such  an  undertaking,  I  must  none  the  less 
endeavour  to  justify  further  our  conclusion  about 
the  Absolute. 

There  is  but  one  Reality,  and  its  being  consists 
in~experience.  In  this  one  whole  all  appearances 
Icome  together,  and  in  coming  together  they  in 
various  degrees  lose  their  distinctive  natures.  The 
essence  of  reality  lies  in  the  union  and  agreement  of 
existence  and  content,  and,  on  the  other  side,  ap- 


456 


REALITY. 


For  take  anything,  no 
less  than  the  Absokite, 
at   once  proclaims  that 


pearance  consists  in   the  discrepancy  between  these 
two  aspects.     And  reality   in   the   end  belongs    to 
nothing  but  the  single  Real, 
matter  what  it  is,  which  is 
and  the  inner  discrepancy 

what  you  have  taken  is  appearance.  The  alleged 
reality  divides  itself  and  falls  apart  into  two  jarring 
factors.  The  "  what "  and  the  "  that "  are  plainly 
two  sides  which  turn  out  not  to  be  the  same,  and 
this  difference  inherent  in  every  finite  fact  entails  its 
disruption.  As  long  as  the  content  stands  for  some- 
thing other  than  its  own  intent  and  meaning,  as  long 
as  the  e.xistence  actually  is  less  or  mgre  than  what 
it  essentially  must  imply,  so  long  we  are  concerned 
with  mere  appearance,  and  not  with  genuine  reality. 
And  we  have  found  in  every  region  that  this  dis- 
crepancy of  aspects  prevails.  The  internal  being  of 
everything  finite  depends  on  that  which  is  beyond 
it.  Hence  everywhere,  insisting  on  a  so-called  fact, 
we  have  found  ourselves  led  by  its  inner  character 
into  something  outside  itself.  And  this  self-contra- 
diction, this  unrest  and  ideality  of  all  things  existing 
is  a  clear  proof  that,  though  such  things  are,  their 
being  is  but  appearance. 

But,  upon  the  other  hand,  in  the  Absolute  no  ap- 
pearance can  be  lost.  Each  one  contributes  and  is 
essential  to  the  unity  of  the  whole.  And  hence  we 
have  observed  (Chapter  x.w.)  that  any  one  aspect, 
when  viewed  by  itself,  may  be  regarded  as  the  end 
for  which  the  others  exist.  Deprived  of  any  one 
aspect  or  element  the  Absolute  may  be  called  worth- 
less. And  thus,  while  you  take  your  stand  on  some 
one  valuable  factor,  the  others  appear  to  you  to  be 
means  which  subserve  its  e.xistence.  Certainly  your 
position  in  such  an  attitude  is  one-sided  and  unstable. 
The  other  factors  are  not  external  means  to,  but  are 
implied  in,  the  first,  and  your  attitude,  therefore,  is 
but  provisional  and  in  the  end  untrue.  It  may  how- 
ever have  served  to  indicate  that  truth  which  we 


THE   ABSOLUTE   AND    ITS    APPEARANCES.  457 

have  here  to  insist  on.  There  is  nothing  in  the 
Absolute  which  is  barely  contingent  or  merely 
accessory.  Every  element,  however  subordinate, 
is  preserved  in  that  relative  whole  in  which  its 
character  is  taken  up  and  merged.  There  are  main 
aspects  of  the  universe  of  which  none  can  be  resolved 
into  the  rest.  Hence  from  this  ground  we  can- 
not say  of  these  main  aspects  that  one  is  higher 
in  rank  or  better  than  another.  They  are  factors 
not  independent,  since  each'  of  itself  implies  and 
calls  in  something  else  to  complete  its  defects,  and 
since  all  are  over-ruled  in  that  final  whole  which 
perfects  them.  But  these  factors,  if  not  equal,  are 
not  subordinate  the  one  to  the  other,  and  in  relation 
to  the  Absolute  they  are  all  alike  essential  and 
necessary. 

In  the  present  chapter,  returning  to  the  idea  of 
the  Absolute  as  a  whole  of  e.xperience,  I  will  from 
this  point  of  view  survey  brietiy  its  main  aspects. 
Of  the  attitudes  possible  in  experience  I  will  try  to 
show  that  none  has  supreinacy.  There  is  not  one 
mode  to  which  the  others  belong  as  its  adjectives, 
or  into  which  they  can  be  resolved.  And  how 
these  various  modes  can  come  together  into  a  single 
unity  must  remain  unintelligible.  Reserving  to  the 
next  chapter  a  final  discussion  on  the  positive  nature 
of  this  Unity,  I  will  lay  stress  here  on  another  side. 
The  Absolute  is  present  in,  and,  in  a  sense,  it  is 
alike  each  of  its  special  appearances  ;  though  present 
everywhere  again  in  different  values  and  degrees. 
I  shall  attempt  in  passing  to  clear  up  some  ques- 
tions with  regard  to  Nature,  and  I  will  end  the 
chapter  with  a  brief  enquiry  as  to  the  meaning  of 
Progress,  and  as  to  the  possibility  of  a  continuance 
of  personal  life  after  death. 

Everything  is  experience,  and  also  experience  is 
one.  In  the  next  chapter  I  shall  once  more  con- 
sider if  it  is  possible  to  doubt  this,  but  for  the  pre- 


458 


REALITY. 


sent  I  shall  assume  it  as  a  truth  which  has  held  good. 
Under  what  main  aspects  then,  let  us  ask,  is  ex- 
perience found  ?  We  may  say,  speaking  broadly, 
that  there  are  two  great  modes,  perception  and 
thought  on  the  one  side,  and  will  and  desire  on  the 
other  side.  Then  there  is  the  aesthetic  attitude, 
which  will  not  fall  entirely  under  either  of  these 
heads  ;  and  again  there  is  pleasure  and  pain  which 
seem  something  distinct  from  both.  Further  we 
have  feeling,  a  term  which  we  must  take  in  two 
senses.  It  is  first  the  general  state  of  the  total  soul 
not  yet  at  all  differentiated  into  any  of  the  preceding 
special  aspects.  And  again  it  is  any  particular  state 
so  far  as  internally  that  has  undistinguished  unity. 
Nqw  of  these  psychical  modes  not  any  one  is  re- 
solvable into  the  others,  nor  can  the  unity  of  the 
Whole  consist  in  one  or  another  portion  of  them. 
Each  of  them  is  incomplete  and  one-sided,  and  calls 
for  assistance  from  without.  We  have  had  to  per- 
ceive this  in  great  part  already  through  former  dis- 
cussions, but  I  will  briefly  resume  and  in  some 
points  supplement  that  evidence  here.  I  am  about 
to  deal  with  the  appearances  of  the  Absolute  mainly 
from  their  psychical  side,  but  a  full  psychological 
discussion  is  impossible,  and  is  hardly  required.  I 
would  ask  the  reader,  whose  views  in  certain  ways 
may  be  divergent  from  mine,  not  to  dwell  on  diver- 
gencies except  so  far  as  they  affect  the  main  result. 

(i)  If  we  consider  first  of  all  the  aspect  of  plea- 
sure and  pain,  it  is  evident  that  this  cannot  be  the 
substance  or  foundation  of  Reality.  For  we  cannot 
regard  the  other  elements  as  adjectives  of,  or  de- 
pendents on,  this  one  ;  nor  again  can  we,  in  any 
way  or  in  any  sense,  resolve  them  into  it.  Pleasure 
and  pain,  it  is  obvious,  are  not  the  one  thing  real. 
But  are  they  real  at  all,  as  such,  and  independently  of 
the  rest  ?  Even  this  we  are  compelled  to  deny. 
For  pleasure  and  pain  are  antagonistic  ;  and  when 
in  the  Whole  they  have  come  together  with  a  balance 


I 


THE  ABSOLUTE  AND  ITS  APPEARANCES. 


459 


of  pleasure,  can  we  be  even  sure  that  this  result  will 
be  pleasure  as  such  ? '  There  is  however  a  lar 
more  serious  objection  to  the  reality  of  pleasure  and 
pain.  For  these  are  mere  abstractions  which  we 
separate  from  the  pleasant  and  the  painful  ;  and  to 
suppose  that  they  are  not  connected  with  those 
states  and  processes,  with  which  they  are  always 
conjoined,  would  be  plainly  irrational.  Indeed 
pleasure  and  pain,  as  things  by  themselves,  would 
contradict  their  known  character.  But,  if  so,  clearly 
they  cannot  be  real  in  themselves,  and  their  reality 
and  essence  will  in  part  fall  beyond  their  own 
limits.  They  are  but  appearances  and  one-sided 
adjectives  of  the  universe,  and  they  are  real  only 
when  taken  up  into  and  merged  in  that  totality. 

(2)  P>om  mere  pleasure  imd  pain  we  may  pass  on 
to  feeling,  and  I  take  feeling  in  the  sense  of  the  im- 
mediate unity  of  a  finite  psychical  centre.  It  means 
for  me,  first,  the  general  condition  before  distinc- 
tions and  relations  have  been  developed,  and  where 
as  yet  neither  any  subject  nor  object  exists.  And 
it  means,  in  the  second  place,  anything  which  is 
present  at  any  stage  of  mental  life,  in  so  far  as  that 
is  only  present  and  simply  is.*  In  this  latter  sense 
we  may  say  that  everything  actual,  no  matter  what, 
must  be  felt  ;  but  we  do  not  call  it  feeling  except  so 
far  as  we  take  it  as  failing  to  be  more.  Now,  in 
either  of  these  senses,  is  it  possible  to  consider  feel- 
ing as  real,  or  as  a  consistent  aspect  of  reality  .''  We 
must  reply  in  the  negative. 

Feeling  has  a  content,  and  this  content  is  not 
consistent  within  itself,  and  such  a  discrepancy  tends 
to  destroy  and  to  break  up  the  stage  of  feeling. 
The  matter  may  be  briefly  put  thus — the  finite  con- 


^  See  above  Chapter  xvii.  and  below  Chapter  xxvii. 

'  Compare  Chapters  ix.,  xix.,  xx.  and  xxvii.,  and  Alind,  N.  S.  6. 
I  had  hoped  elsewhere  to  write  something  on  the  position  to  be 
given  to  I'eeling  in  psychology.  But  for  the  purpose  of  this 
volume  I  trust,  on  the  whole,  to  have  said  enough. 


460 


REALITY. 


tent  is  irreconcilable  with  the  immediacy  of  its 
existence.  For  the  finite  content  is  necessarily 
determined  from  the  outside  ;  its  exterhal  relations 
(however  negative  they  may  desire  to  remain)  pene- 
trate its  essence,  and  so  carry  that  beyond  its  own 
being.  And  hence,  since  the  "what"  of  all  feeling 
is  discordant  with  its  "  that,"  it  is  appearance,  and, 
as  such,  it  cannot  be  real.  This  fleeting  and  un- 
true character  is  perpetually  forced  on  our  notice  by 
the  hard  fact  of  change.  And,  both  from  within 
and  from  without,  feeling  is  compelled  to  pass  off 
into  the  relational  consciousness.  It  is  the  ground 
and  foundation  of  further  developments,  but  it  is  a 
foundation  that  bears  them  only  by  a  ceaseless  lapse 
from  itself  Hence  we  could  not,  in  any  proper 
sense,  call  these  products  its  adjectives.  For  their 
life  consists  in  the  diremption  of  feeling's  unity,  and 
this  unity  is  not  again  restored  and  made  good  ex- 
cept in  the  Absolute. 

(3)  We  may  pass  next  to  the  perceptional  or 
theoretic,  and  again,  on  the  other  side,  to  the  practic- 
al aspect.  Fach  of  these  differs  from  the  two  fore- 
going by  implying  distinction,  and,  in  the  first  place 
a  distinction  between  subject  and  object.'  The  per- 
ceptional side  has  at  the  outset,  of  course,  no  special 
existence  ;  for  it  is  given  at  first  in  union  with  the 
practical  side,  and  is  but  slowly  differentiated.  But 
what  we  are  concerned  with  here  is  to  attempt  to 
apprehend  its  specific  nature.  One  or  more  ele- 
ments are  separated  from  the  confused  mass  of  feel- 
ing, and  stand  apparently  by  themselves  and  over 
against  thi.s.  And  the  distinctive  character  of 
such  an  object  is  that  it  seems  simply  to  be.  If  it 
appeared  to  influence  the  mass  which  it  confronts,  so 
as  to  lead  that  to  act  on  it  and  alter  it,  and  if  such 
a  relation  qualified  its  nature,  the  attitude  would  be 

'  This  distinction,  I  have  no  doubt,  is  developed  in  time  {Mind, 
No.  47) ;  but,  even  if  we  suppose  it  to  be  original,  the  further 
conclusion  is  in  no  way  aflected, 


: 


THE  ABSOLUTE  AND  ITS  APPEARANCES. 


461 


practical.  But  the  perceptional  relation  is  supposed 
to  fall  wholly  outside  the  essence  of  the  object.  It 
is  in  short  disregarded,  or  else  is  dismissed  as  a 
something  accidental  and  irrelevant.  For  the  reality, 
as  thought  of  or  as  perceived,  in  itself  simply  is.  It 
may  be  given,  or  again  sought  for,  discovered  or 
reflected  on,  but  all  this — however  much  there  may 
be  of  it — is  nothing  to  it.  For  the  object  only 
stands  in  relation,  and  emphatically  in  no  sense  is 
the  relation  in  which  it  stands. 

This  is  the  vital  inconsistency  of  the  real  as  per- 
ception or  thought.  Its  essence  depends  on  quali- 
fication by  a  relation  which  it  attempts  to  ignore. 
And  this  one  inconsistency  soon  exhibits  itself  from 
two  points  of  view.  The  felt  background,  from 
which  the  theoretic  object  stands  out,  is  supposed  in 
no  way  to  contribute  to  its  being.  But,  even  at  the 
stage  of  perception  or  sensation,  this  hypothesis 
breaks  down.  And.  when  we  advance  to  reflective 
thinking,  such  a  position  clearly  is  untenable.  The 
world  can  hardly  stand  there  to  be  found,  when  its 
essence  appears  to  be  inseparable  from  the  process 
of  finding,  and  when  assuredly  it  would  not  be  the 
whole  world  unless  it  included  within  itself  both  the 
finding  and  the  finder.  But,  this  last  perfection 
once  reached,  the  object  no  longer  could  stand  in 
any  relation  at  all  ;  and,  with  this,  its  proper  being 
would  be  at  once  both  completed  and  destroyed. 
The  perceptional  attitude  would  entirely  have  passed 
beyond  itself. 

We  may  bring  out  again  the  same  contradiction 
if  we  begin  from  the  other  side.  As  perceived  or 
thought  of  the  reality  is,  and  it  is  also  itself.  But 
its  self  obviously,  on  the  other  hand,  includes  rela- 
tion to  others,  and  it  is  determined  inwardly  by 
those  others  from  which  it  is  distinguished.  Its 
content  therefore  slides  beyond  its  existence,  its 
"  what "  spreads  out  beyond  its  "  that."  It  thus  no 
longer  is,  but  has  become  something  ideal  in  which 


462 


REALITY. 


the  Reality  appears.  And,  since  this  appearance  is 
not  identical  with  reality,  it  cannot  wholly  be  true. 
Hence  it  must  be  corrected,  until  finally  in  its 
content  it  has  ceased  to  be  false.  But,  in  the  first 
place,  this  correction  is  merely  ideal.  It  consists  in 
a  process  throughout  which  content  is  separated 
from  existence.  Hence,  if  truth  were  complete,  it 
would  not  be  truth,  because  that  is  only  appearance  ; 
and  in  the  second  place,  while  truth  remains  appear- 
ance, it  cannot  possibly  be  complete.  The  theoretic 
object  moves  towards  a  consummation  in  which  all 
distinction  and  all  ideality  must  be  suppressed.  But, 
when  that  is  reached,  the  theoretic  attitude  has  been, 
as  such,  swallowed  up.  It  throughout  on  one  hand 
presupposes  a  relation,  and  on  the  other  hand  it 
asserts  an  independence  ;  and,  if  these  jarrinj,^  aspects 
are  removed  or  are  harmonized,  its  proper  character 
is  gone.  Hence  perception  and  thought  must  either 
attempt  to  fall  back  into  the  immediacy  of  feeling, 
or  else,  confessing  themselves  to  be  one-sided  and 
false,  they  must  seek  completion  beyond  themselves 
in  a  supplement  and  counterpart. 

(4)  With  this  we  are  naturally  led  to  consider  the 
practical  aspect  of  things.  Here,  as  before,  we  must 
have  an  object,  a  something  distinct  from,  and  over 
against,  the  central  mass  of  feeling.  But  in  this  case 
the  relation  shows  itself  as  essential,  and  is  felt  as 
opposition.  An  ideal  alteration  of  the  object  is 
suggested,  and  the  suggestion  is  not  rejected  by  the 
feeling  centre  ;  and  the  process  is  completed  by  this 
ideal  qualification,  in  me,  itself  altering,  and  so  itself 
becoming,  the  object.  Such  is,  taken  roughly,  the 
main  essence  of  the  practical  attitude,  and  its  one- 
sidedness  and  insufficiency  are  evident  at  once.  For 
it  consists  in  the  healing  up  of  a  division  which  it 
has  no  power  to  create,  and  which,  once  healed  up, 
is  the  entire  removal  of  the  practical  attitude.  Will 
certainly  produces,  not  mere  ideas,  but  actual  exist- 
ence.    But  it  depends  on  ideality  and  mere  appear- 


THE   ABSOLUTE   AND    ITS    Al'PEARANCES. 


463 


ance  for  its  starting-point  and  essence  ;  and  the 
harmony  which  it  makes  is  for  ever  finite,  and  hence 
incomplete  and  unstable.  And  if  this  were  not  so, 
and  if  the  ideal  and  the  existing  were  made  one,  the 
relation  between  them  would  have  disappeared,  and 
will,  as  such,  must  have  vanished.  Thus  the  atti- 
tude of  practice,  like  all  the  rest,  is  not  reality  but  is 
appearance.'  And  with  this  result  we  may  pass 
onwards,  leaving  to  a  later  place  the  consideration 
of  certain  mistakes  about  the  will.  For  since  the 
will  implies  and  presupposes  the  distinction  made  in 
perception  and  idea,  we  need  hardly  ask  if  it  possesses 
more  reality  than  these. 

(5)  In  the  aesthetic  attitude  we  may  seem  at  last 
to  have  transcended  the  opposition  of  idea  to  e.xist- 
ence,  and  to  have  at  last  surmounted  and  risen 
beyond  the  relational  consciousness.     For  the  aes- 

'  In  the  foregoing  chapter  we  have  already  dealt  with  the  con- 
tradictions of  Goodness.  For  the  nature  of  Desire  and  Volition 
see  Mind,  No.  49.  Compare  also  No.  43,  where  I  have  said 
something  on  the  meaning  of  Resolve.  There  are,  indeed, 
instances  where  ihe  idea  does  not  properly  pass  into  existence, 
and  where  yet  we  are  justified  in  speaking  of  will,  and  not  merely 
of  resolve.  Such  are  the  cases  where  I  will  something  to  take 
place  after  my  death,  or  where  again,  as  we  say,  I  will  now  to  do 
sometliing  which  I  am  incapable  of  performing.  The  process 
here  is  certainly  incomplete,  but  still  can  be  rightly  called  voli- 
tion, because  the  movement  of  the  idea  towards  existence  has 
actually  begun.  It  has  started  on  its  course,  external  or  inward, 
so  as  already  to  be  past  recall.  In  the  same  way  when  the 
trigger  is  pressed,  and  the  hammer  lias  also  perhaps  fallen,  a 
miss-fire  leaves  the  act  incomplete,  but  we  still  may  be  said  to 
have  fired.  In  mere  Resolve,  on  the  other  hand,  the  incomjwti- 
bility  of  the  idea  with  any  present  realization  of  its  content  is 
recognised.  And  hence  Resolve  not  aiming  straight  at  present 
fact,  but  satisfied  with  an  ideal  filling-out  of  its  idea,  should  not 
be  called  volition.  The  process  is  not  only  incomplete,  but  it 
also  knowingly  holds  back  and  diverges  from  the  direct  rjad  to 
existence.  Resolve  may  be  taken  as  a  case  of  internal  volition,  if 
you  consider  it  as  the  bringing  about  of  a  certain  state  of  mind. 
But  the  production  of  the  resolve,  and  not  the  resolve  itself,  is,  in 
this  case,  will. 


464 


RF.AIJTV. 


thetic  attitude  seems  to  retain  the  immediacy  of 
feeling.  And  it  has  also  an  object  with  a  certain 
character,  but  yet  an  object  self-existent  and  not 
merely  ideal.  This  aspect  of  the  world  satisfies  us 
in  a  way  unattainable  by  theory  or  practice,  and  it 
plainly  cannot  be  reduced  and  resolved  into  either 
However,  when  we  consider  it  more  narrowly,  its 
defects  become  patent.  It  is  no  solution  of  our 
problems,  since  it  fails  to  satisfy  either  the  claims  of 
reality  or  even  its  own. 

That  which  is  aesthetic  may  generally  be  defined 
as  the  self-existent  emotional.  It  can  hardly  all  fall 
properly  under  the  two  heads  of  the  beautiful  and 
ugly,  but  for  my  present  purpose  it  will  be  convenient 
to  regard  it  as  doing  so.  And  since  in  the  Absolute 
ugliness,  like  error  and  evil,  must  be  overpowered 
and  absorbed,  we  may  here  confine  our  attention 
entirely  to  beauty. 

Beauty  is  the  self-existent  pleasant.  It  is  cer- 
J  tainly  not  the  self-existent  which  enjoys  its  own 
pleasure,  for  that,  so  far  as  one  sees,  need  not  be 
■  beautiful  at  all.  But  the  beautiful  must  be  self- 
existent,  and  its  being  must  be  independent  as  such. 
Hence  it  must  exist  as  an  individual  and  not  merely 
in  idea.  Thoughts,  or  even  thought-processes,  may 
be  beautiful,  but  only  so  if  they  appear,  as  it  were, 
self-contained,  and,  in  a  manner,  for  sense.  But  the 
beautiful,  once  more,  must  be  an  object.  It  must 
stand  in  relation  to  my  mind,  and  again,  it  must 
possess  a  distinguished  ideal  content.  We  cannot 
say  that  mere  feeling  is  beautiful,  though  in  a  com- 
plex whole  we  may  find  at  once  the  blended  aspects 
of  feeling  and  of  beauty.  And  the  beautiful,  last  of 
all,  must  be  actually  pleasant.  But,  if  so,  then  once 
more  it  must  be  pleasant  for  some  one.' 

Sifch  an  union  of  characters  is  inconsistent,  and 

'  The  possibility  of  some  margin  of  pleasure  falling  outside  all 
finite  centres,  seems  very  slight  (Chapter  xxvii.).  So  far  as  that 
pleasure  is  an  object,  the  relation  is  certainly  essential. 


Tilt:    ABSOLUTE   AND    ITS    APPEARANCES.         465 

we  require  no  great  space  to  point  out  its  discre- 
pancy. Let  us  tirst  abstract  from  the  pleasantness 
and  from  the  relation  to  me.  and  let  us  suppose  that 
the  beautiful  exists  independently.  Yet  even  here 
we  shall  find  it  in  contradiction  with  itself.  For  the 
sides  of  existence  and  of  content  must  be  concor- 
dant and  at  one  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  because 
the  object  is  finite,  such  an  agreement  is  impossible. 
And  thus,  as  was  the  case  with  truth  and  goodness, 
there  is  a  partial  divergence  of  the  two  aspects  of 
extension  and  harmony.  The  expression  is  imper- 
fect, or  again  that  which  is  expressed  is  too  narrow. 
And  in  both  ways  alike  in  the  end  there  is  want  of 
harmoniousness.  there  is  an  inner  discrepancy  and 
a  failure  in  reality.  For  the  content — itself  in  any 
case  always  finite,  and  so  alvvays  inconsistent  with 
itself — ^may  even  visibly  go  beyond  its  actual  ex- 
pression, and  be  merely  ideal.  And,  on  the  other 
side,  the  existing  expression  must  in  various  ways 
and  degrees  fall  short  of  reality.  For,  taken  at  its 
strongest,  it  after  all  must  be  finite  fact.  It  is 
determined  from  the  outside,  and  so  must  inter- 
nally be  in  discord  with  itself.  I'hus  the  beautiful 
object,  viewed  as  independent,  is  no  more  than 
appearance.' 

But  to  Jake  beauty  as  an  independent  existence 
is  impossible.  For  pleasure  belongs  to  its  essence, 
and  to  suppose  pleasure,  or  any  emotion,  standing 
apart  from  some  self  seems  out  of  the  question. 
The  beautiful,  therefore,  will  be  determined  by  a 
quality  in  me.  And  in  any  case,  because  (as  we 
have  seen)  it  is  an  object  for  perception,  the  relation 
involved  in  perception  must  be  essential  to  its  being. 
Either  then,  both  as  perceived  and  as  emotional, 
beauty  will  be  characterized  internally  by  what  falls 
outside  itself.     And  obviously  in  this  case  it  will 

'  The  question  of  degrees  in  beauty,  like  that  of  degrees  in 
1  truth  and  goodness,  would  be  interesting.     But  it  is  hardly  neces-     ' 
xsary  for  us  to  enter  on  it  iiere. 

A.  R.  n   H 


466 


REALITY. 


have  turned  out  to  be  appearance.  Or,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  must  include  within  its  own  limits 
this  external  condition  of  its  life.  But,  with  that 
total  absorption  of  the  percipient  and  sentient  self, 
the  whole  relation,  and  with  it  beauty  as  such,  will 
have  vanished. 

The  various  aspects,  brought  together  in  the 
aesthetic  object,  have  been  seen  to  fall  apart. 
Beauty  is  not  really  immediate,  or  independent,  or 
harmonious  in  itself.  And,  attempting  to  satisfy 
these  requirements,  it  must  pass  beyond  its  own 
character.  Like  all  the  other  aspects  this  also  has 
been  shown  to  be  appearance. 

We  have  now  surveyed  the  different  regions  of 
experience,  and  have  found  each  to  be  imperfect. 
We  certainly  cannot  say  that  the  .Absolute  is  any 
one  of  them.  On  the  other  hand  each  can  be  seen 
to  be  insufficient  and  inconsistent,  because  it  is  not 
__|.-  also,  and  as  well,  the  rest.  Each  aspect  to  a  certain 
extent,  already  in  fact,  iiiiplies  the  others  in  its 
existence,  and  in  order  to  become  Reality  would 
have  to  go  on  to  include  them  wholly.  And  hence 
Reality  seems  contained  in  the  totality  of  these  its 
diverse  provinces,  and  they  on  their  side  each  to  be 
a  partial  appearance  of  the  universe.  Let  us  once 
more  briefly  |jass  them  in  review. 

With  pleasure  or  pain  we  can  perceive  at  once 
that  its  nature  is  adjectival.  We  certainly  cannot, 
starting  with  what  we  know  of  pleasure  and  pain, 
show  thai  this  directly  implies  the  remaining  aspects 
of  the  world.  We  must  be  satisfied  with  the  know- 
ledge that  pain  and  pleasure  are  adjectives,  adjec- 
tives, so  far  as  we  see,  attached  to  every  other 
aspect  of  experience.  A  complete  insight  into  the 
conditions  of  these  adjectives  is  not  attainable  ;  but, 
if  we  could  get  it,  it  doubtless  would  include  every 
side  of  the  universe.  But,  passing  from  pleasure 
and  pain  to  Feeling,  we  can  verify  there  at  once  the 


THE    ABSOLUTE   AND    ITS    APPEARANCES. 


467 


principle  of  discord  and  development  in  its  essence. 
The  sides  of  content  and  existence  already  strive  to 
diverge.  And  hence  feeling  changes  not  merely 
through  outer  force  but  through  internal  defect. 
The  theoretical,  the  practiced,  and  the  :esthetic 
aspect  of  things  are  attempts  to  work  out  and  make 
good  this  divergence  of  existence  and  idea.  Each 
must  thus  be  regarded  as  a  one-sided  and  special 
growth  from  feeling.  And  feeling  still  remains  in 
the  background  as  the  unity  of  these  differences, 
a  unity  that  cannot  find  its  complete  expression  in 
any  or  in  all  of  them.  Defect  is  obvious  at  once 
in  the  aesthetic  attitude.  Beauty  both  attempts  and 
fails  to  arrive  at  immediate  reality.  For,  even  if 
you  take  it  as  real  apart  from  relation  to  a  per- 
cipient, there  is  never  entire  accordance  between  its 
two  demands  for  completeness  and  harmony.  That 
which  is  expressed  in  fact  remains  too  narrow,  and 
that  which  is  wider  remains  imperfectly  expressed. 
And  hence,  to  be  entirely  beautiful,  the  object  would 
have  also  to  be  completely  good  and  wholly  true. 
Its  idea  would  require  to  be  self-contained,  and  so 
all-embracing,  and  to  be  carried  out  in  an  existence 
no  less  self-siifhcient.  But,  if  so,  the  distinctive 
characters  of  truth  and  goodness  and  beauty  would 
have  vanished.  We  reach  again  the  same  result  if 
we  turn  to  the  theoretical  aspect  of  the  world.  Per- 
ception or  theory,  if  it  were  but  true,  must  also  be 
good.  For  the  fact  would  have  to  be  so  taken  that 
it  exhibited  no  difference  from  the  thought.  But 
such  a  concord  of  idea  and  existence  would  certainly 
also  be  goodness.  And  again,  being  individual,  it 
would  as  certainly  no  less  be  beautiful.  But  on  the 
other  hand,  since  all  these  divergences  would  have 
been  absorbed,  truth,  beauty  and  goodness,  as  such, 
would  no  longer  exist.  We  arrive  at  the  same 
conclusion  when  we  begin  from  the  practical  side. 
Nothing  would  content  us  finally  but  the  complete 
union  of  harmony  and  extent.     A  reality  that  sug- 


468 


REALITY. 


gested  any  idea  not  existing  actually  within  its  limits, 
would  not  be  perfectly  good.  Perfect  goodness 
would  thus  imply  the  entire  and  absolute  presence 
of  the  ideal  aspect.  But  this,  if  present,  would  be 
perfect  and  absolute  truth.  And  it  would  be 
beautiful  also,  since  it  would  entail  the  individual 
harmony  of  existence  with  content.  But,  once 
again,  since  the  distinctive  differences  would  now 
have  disapi^eared,  we  should  have  gone  beyond 
beauty  or  goodness  or  truth  altogether.' 

We  have  seen  that  the  \arious  aspects  of  expe- 
ience  imply  one  another,  and  that  all  point  to  a 
jnity  which  comprehends  and  perfects  them.  And 
1  would  urge  next  that  the  unity  of  these  aspects  is 
unknown.  By  this  I  certainly  do  not  mean  to  deny 
that  it  essentially  is  experience,  but  it  is  an  exper- 
ience of  which,  as  such,  we  have  no  direct  know- 
ledge. We  never  have,  or  are,  a  state  which  is  the 
actual  unity  of  all  aspects  ;  and  we  must  admit  that 
in  their  special  natures  they  remain  inexplicable. 
An  explanation  would  be  the  reduction  of  their 
plurality  to  unity,  in  such  a  way  that  the  relation 
between  the  unity  and  the  variety  was  understood. 
And  everywhere  an  explanation  of  this  kind  in  the 
end  is  beyond  us.  If  we  abstract  one  or  more  of 
the  aspects  of  experience,  and  use  this  known  ele- 
ment as  a  ground  to  which  the  others  are  referred, 
our  failure  is  evident.  For  if  the  rest  could  be 
developed  from  this  ground,  as  really  they  cannot 
be,  they  with  their  differences  can  yet  not  be  predic- 

'  I  have  Bot  thought  it  necessary  here  lo  point  out  how  in  their 
actual  existence  these  aspects  are  implicated  with  one  another. 
.\11  the  other  aspects  are  more  or  less  the  objects  of,  and  pro- 
duced by,  will ;  and  will  itself,  together  with  tlie  rest,  is  an  object 
to  thought.  Thought  again  depends  on  all  for  its  material,  and 
will  on  all  for  its  ideas.  And  again  the  same  psychical  state  is 
indifferently  will  or  thought,  according  to  the  side  from  which 
you  view  it  (p.  474).  Every  state  again  to  some  extent  may  be 
considered  and  taken  as  feeling. 


THE   AUSOLUTE   AND    ITS    APPEARANCES. 


469 


ated  of  it.  But,  if  so,  in  the  end  the  whole  diver- 
sity must  be  attributed  as  adjectives  to  a  unity 
which  is  not  known.  Thus  no  separate  aspect  can 
possibly  serve  as  an  explanation  of  the  others.  And 
again,  as  we  have  found,  no  separate  aspect  is  by 
itself  intelligible.  For  each  is  inconsistent  with 
itself,  and  so  is  forced  to  take  in  others.  Hence 
to  e.xplain  would  be  possible  only  when  the  whole, 
as  such,  was  comprehended.  ,A.nd  such  an  actual 
and  detailed  comprehension  we  have  seen  is  not 
possible. 

Resting  then  on  this  general  conclusion  we  might 
go  forward  at  once.  We  might  assume  that  any 
reduction  of  the  Absolute  to  one  or  two  of  the  special 
modes  of  experience  is  out  of  the  question,  and  we 
might  forthwith  attempt  a  final  discussion  of  its 
nature  and  unity.  It  may  however  be  instructive 
to  consider  more  closely  a  proposed  reduction  of 
this  kind.  Let  us  ask  then  if  Reality  can  be  rightly 
explained  as  the  identity  of  Thought  and  Will.  But 
^fiftfwe  may  remind  ourselves  of  some  of  those  points 
which  a  full  explanation  must  inckide. 

In  order  to  understand  the  universe  we  should 
require  to  know  how  the  special  matter  of  sense 
stands  everywhere  to  its  relations  and  forms,  and 
again  how  pleasure  and  pain  are  connected  with 
these  forms  and  these  qualities.  We  should  have 
to  comprehend  further  the  entire  essence  of  the 
relational  consciousness,  and  the  connection  between 
its  unity  and  its  plurality  of  distinguished  terms. 
We  should  have  to  know  why  everything  (or  all  but 
everything)  comes  in  finite  centres  of  immediate 
feeling,  and  how  these  centres  with  regard  to  one 
another  are  not  directly  pervious.  Then  there  is 
process  in  time  with  its  perpetual  shifting  of  content 
from  existence,  a  happening  vvliich  seems  certainly 
not  all  included  under  will  and  thought.  The 
physical  world  again  suggests  some  problems.  Are 
there  really  ideas  and  ends  that  work   in  Nature  .'' 


470 


REALITY. 


And  why  Is  it  that,  within  us  and  without  us,  there 
is  a  knowable  arran^jement,  an  order  such  that 
existence  answers  to  thought,  and  that  personal 
identity  and  a  communication  between  souls  is  pos- 
sible ?  We  have,  in  short,  on  one  side  a  diversity 
and  finitude,  and  on  the  other  side  we  have  a  unit}'. 
And,  unless  we  know  throughout  the  universe  how 
these  aspects  stand  the  one  to  the  other,  the  universe 
is  not  explained. 

Hut  a  partial  explanation,  I  may  here  be  reminded, 
is  better  than  none.  That  in  the  present  case,  I  reply, 
would  be  a  serious  error.  You  take  from  the  whole 
of  experience  some  element  or  elements  as  a  principle, 
and  you  admit,  I  presume,  that  in  the  whole  there 
remains  some  aspect  unexplained  and  outstanding- 
Now  such  an  aspect  belongs  to  the  universe,  and 
must,  therefore,  be  predicated  of  a  unity  not  con- 
tained in  your  elements.  But,  if  so,  your  elements 
are  at  once  degraded,  for  they  become  adjectives 
of  this  unknown  unity.  Hence  the  objection  is  not 
tliat  your  exphuiation  is  Incomplete,  but  that  its  very 
principle  is  unsound.  You  have  offered  as  ultimate 
what  in  its  working  proclaims  itself  appearance.  And 
the  partial  explanation  has  implied  in  fact  a  false 
pretence  of  knowledge. 

We  may  verify  this  result  at  once  in  the  proposed 
reduction  of  the  other  aspects  of  the  world  to  intellig- 
ence and  will.  Before  we  see  anything  of  this  in 
detail  we  may  state  beforehand  Its  necessary  and 
main  defect.  Suppose  that  every  feature  of  the 
universe  has  been  fairly  brought  under,  and  included 
in  these  two  aspects,  the  universe  still  remains  un- 
explained. For  the  two  aspects,  however  much  one 
implies  and  indeed  r.r  the  other,  must  in  some  sense 
still  be  two.  And  unless  we  comprehend  how  their 
plurality,  where  they  are  diverse,  stands  to  their  unity, 
where  they  are  at  one,  we  have  ended  in  failure.  Our 
principles  after  all  will  not  be  ultimate,  but  will  them- 
selves be  the  twofold  appearance  of  a  unity  left  un- 


THE   ABbOLUTK    AND    ITS    APPEARANCES. 


471 


explained.      It  may  liowever  repay  us  to  examine 
furtlier  the  proposed  reduction. 

The  plausibility  of  this  consists  very  largely  in 
vagueness,  and  its  strength  lies  in  the  uncertain  sense 
given  to  will  and  intelligence.  We  seem  to  know 
these  terms  so  well  that  we  run  no  risk  in  applying 
them,  and  then  imperceptibly  we  pass  into  an  applic- 
ation where  their  meaning  is  chani;cd.  We  have  to 
explain  the  world,  and  what  we  find  there  is  a  process 
with  two  aspects.  There  is  a  constant  loosening  of 
idea  from  fact,  and  a  making-good  once  more  in  a 
new  existence  of  this  recurring  discrepancy.  We 
find  nowhere  substances  fixed  and  rigid.  They  are 
relative  wholes  of  ideal  content,  standing  on  a  cease- 
lessly renewed  basis  of  two-sided  change.  Identity, 
permanence,  and  continuity,  are  everywhere  ideal ; 
they  are  unities  for  ever  created  and  destroyed  by 
the  constant  flux  of  existence,  a  flux  which  they 
provoke,  and  which  supports  them  and  is  essential 
to  their  life.  Now,  looking  at  the  universe  so,  we 
may  choose  to  speak  of  thought  wherever  the  idea 
becomes  loose  from  its  existence  in  fact ;  and  we 
may  speak  of  will  wherever  this  unity  is  once  more 
made  good.  And,  with  this  introduction  of  what 
seems  self-evident,  the  two  main  aspects  of  the 
world  appear  to  have  found  an  explanation.  Or  we 
possibly  might  help  ourselves  to  this  result  by  a 
further  vagueness.  I'or  everything,  at  all  events, 
either  is,  or  else  happens  in  time.  We  might  say 
then  that,  so  far  as  it  happens,  it  is  produced  by  will, 
and  that,  so  far  as  it  is,  it  is  an  object  for  perception 
or  thought.  But,  passing  this  by  without  considera- 
tion, let  us  regard  the  process  of  the  world  as 
presenting  two  asjiects.  Thought  must  then  be 
taken  as  the  idealizing  side  of  this  process,  and  will, 
on  the  other  hand,  must  be  viewed  as  the  side  which 
makes  ideas  to  be  real.  And  let  us,  for  the  present 
also,  suppose  that  will  and  thought  are  in  themselves 
more  or  less  self-evident. 


472 


REALITY. 


N< 


ph 


first,  that  such 


It  IS  plain,  nrst,  mat  sucn  a  view  compels  us" 
to  postulate  very  much  more  than  we  observe.      For 
ideality  certainly  does  not  appear  to  be  all  produced 
by  thought,  and  actual  existence,  as  certainly,  does 
not  all  appear  as  the  eft'ect  of  will.     The  latter  is 
obvious  whether  in  our  own  selves,  or  in  the  course 
of  Nature,  or  again  in  any  other  of  the  selves  that 
we    know.     And,    with    regard    to    ideality   or   the 
loosening  of  content  from  fact,  this   is  everywhere 
the  common  mark  of  appearance.      It  does  not  seem 
exclusively  confined  to  or  distinctive  of  thinking. 
Thought  does  not  seem  co-extensive  in  general  with 
the  relational  form,  and  it  must  be  said  to  accept,  as 
well  as  to  create,  ideal  distinctions.     Ideality  appears, 
in  short,  often  as  the  result  of  psychical  changes  and 
processes  which  do  not  seem,  in  the  proper  sense,  to 
imply  any  thinking.      These  are  difficulties,  but  still 
they  may  perhaps  be  dealt  with.     For,  just  as  we 
could  set  no  limits  to  the  possible  existences  of  souls, 
so  we  can  Ux  no  bounds  to  the  possible  working  of 
thought  and  will.    Our  mere  failure  to  discover  them 
here  or  there,  and  whether  within  ourselves  or  again 
outside  us,  does  not  anywhere  disprove  their  exist- 
ence.    And  as  souls  to  an  unknown  extent  can  have 
their  life  and  world  in  common,  so  the  effects  of  will 
and  thougiit  may  show  themselves  there  where  the 
actual  process  is  not  experienced.    That  wliich  comes 
to  me  as  a  mechanical  occurrence,  or  again  as  an  ideal 
distinction  which  I  have  never  made,  may  none  the 
less,  also  and  essentially,  be  will  and  tliought.     And 
it  may  be  experienced  as  such,  completely  or  partly, 
outside  me.     My  reason  and  my  plan  to  other  finite 
centres  may  only  be  chance,  and  their  intelligible 
functions  may  strike  on  me  as  a  dark  necessity.     But 
for  a  higher  unity  our  blind  entanglement  is  lucid 
order.  The worlddiscordant, half- completed.and accid- 
ental for  each  one,  is  in  the  Whole  a  compensated 
system  of  conspiring  particulars.      Everything  ther 
is  the  joint   result  of  two  functions  which  in  thei 


TilK    ABSOLUTE   AND    ITS    APPEARANCES. 


473 


working  are  one,  and  every  least  detail  is  still  the 
outcome  of  intelligence  and  will.  Certainly  such  a 
doctrine  is  a  postulate,  in  so  far  as  its  particulars 
cannot  be  verified.  But  taken  in  general  it  may  be 
urged  also  as  a  legitimate  inference  and  a  necessary 
conclusion. 

Still  in  the  way  of  this  conclusion,  which  I  have 
tried  to  set  out,  we  find  other  difficulties  as  yet 
unremoved.  There  is  pleasure  and  pain,  and  again 
the  facts  of  feelin":  and  of  the  aesthetic  consciousness. 
Now,  if  thought  and  will  fail  to  explain  these,  and 
they,  along  with  thought  and  will,  have  to  be  pre- 
dicated unexplained  of  the  Unity,  the  Unity  after 
all  is  unknown.  Feeling,  in  the  first  place,  cannot 
be  regarded  as  the  indifTerent  ground  of  perception 
and  will  ;  for,  if  so,  this  ground  itself  offers  a  new 
fact  which  requires  e.xplanation.  Feeling  therefore 
must  be  taken  as  a  sort  of  confusion,  and  as  a  nebula 
which  would  grow  distinct  on  closer  scrutiny.  And 
the  a.*sthetic  attitude,  perhaps,  may  be  regarded  as 
the  perceived  equilibrium  of  both  our  functions. 
It  must  be  admitted  certainly  that  such  an  attitude, 
if  the  unity  alike  of  thought  and  will,  remains  a  source 
of  embarrassment.  For  it  seems  hardly  derivable 
from  both  as  diverse;  and,  taken  as  their  unity,  it, 
upon  the  other  side,  certainly  fails  to  contain  or 
account  for  either.  And,  if  we  pass  from  this  to 
pleasure  and  pain,  we  do  but  gain  another  difficulty. 
For  the  connection  of  these  adjectives  with  our  two 
functions  seems  in  the  end  inexplicable,  while,  on 
the  other  hand,  I  do  not  perceive  that  this  connec- 
tion is  self-evident.  We  seem  in  fact  drifting  towards 
the  admission  that  there  are  other  aspects  of  the 
world,  which  must  be  referred  as  adjectives  to  our 
identity  of  will  and  thought,  while  their  inclusion 
within  will  or  thought  remains  uncertain.  But 
this  is  virtually  to  allow  that  thought  and  will  are 
not  the  essence  of  the  universe. 


474 


RF.ALITV. 


Let  us  go  on  to  consider  internal  difficulties. 
Will  and  understanding  are  to  be  each  self-evident, 
but  on  the  other  hand  each  evidently,  apart  from 
the  other,  has  lost  its  special  being.  For  will  pre- 
supposes the  distinction  of  idea  from  fact — a  distinc- 
tion made  actual  by  a  process,  and  presumably  itself 
due  to  will.  And  thought  has  to  start  from  the  exist- 
ence which  only  will  can  make.  Hence  it  presupposes, 
and  again  as  an  existing  process  seems  created  by, 
will,  although  will  on  its  side  is  dependent  on  thought. 
We  must,  1  presume,  try  to  meet  this  objection  by 
laying  stress  on  the  aspect  of  unity.  Our  two 
functions  really  are  inseparable,  and  it  therefore 
is  natural  that  one  should  imply  and  should  pre- 
suppose the  other.  Certainly  hitherto  we  have 
found  everywhere  that  an  unresting  circle  of  this 
kind  is  the  mark  of  appearance,  but  let  us  here  be 
content  to  pass  on.  Will  and  thought  everywhere 
then  are  implicated  the  one  with  the  other.  Will 
without  an  idea,  and  thought  that  did  not  depend 
upon  will,  would  neither  be  itself.  To  a  certain 
extent,  then,  will  essentially  is  thought ;  and,  just  as 
essentially,  all  thought  is  will,  .'\gain  the  existence 
of  thought  is  an  end  which  will  calls  into  being,  and 
will  is  an  object  for  the  reflections  and  constructions 
of  theory.  They  arc  not,  then,  two  clear  functions 
in  unity,  but  eacli  function,  taken  by  itself,  is  still 
the  identity  of  both.  And  each  can  hardly  be 
itself,  and  not  the  other,  as  being  a  mere  prepon- 
derance of  itself  ;  for  there  seems  to  be  no  portion 
of  either  which  can  claim  to  be,  if  unsupported  and 
alone.  Will  and  thought  then  differ  only  as  we 
abstract  and  consider  aspects  onesidedly  ;  or,  to 
speak  plainly,  their  diversity  is  barely  appearance. 

If  however  thought  and  will  really  are  not  dif- 
ferent, they  arc  no  longer  two  elements  or  principles. 
They  are  not  two  known  diversities  which  serve  to 
explain  the  variety  of  the  world.  For,  if  their 
difference  is  appearance,  still  that  very  appearance 


THE    AliSOLUTK    AND    ITS    AIM'KARAXCES. 


475 


is  wli;it  we  have  most  to  explain.  We  are  not  to  go 
outside  will  and  thought,  in  order  to  seek  our  ex- 
planation;  and  yet,  keeping  within  them,  we  seem 
unable  to  find  any.  The  identity  of  both  is  no 
solution,  unless  that  identity  explains  their  difference; 
for  this  difference  is  the  very  problem  required  to 
be  solved.  We  have  given  us  a  process  of  happen- 
ing and  finitude,  and  in  this  process  we  are  able  to 
point  out  two  main  aspects.  To  explain  such  a 
process  is  to  say  why  and  how  it  possesses  and 
supports  this  known  diversity.  Hut  by  the  proposed 
reduction  to  will  and  thought  we  have  done  little 
more  than  give  two  names  to  two  unexplained 
aspects.  For,  ignore  every  other  difficulty,  and  you 
have  still  on  your  hands  the  main  question,  Why  is 
it  that  thought  and  will  diverge  orapi)ear  to  diverge? 
It  is  in  this  real  or  apparent  divergence  that  the 
actual  world  of  fmite  things  consists. 

Or  examine  the  question  from  another  side.  Will 
and  thought  may  be  appealed  to  in  order  to  explain 
the  given  process  in  time,  and  certainly  each  of  them 
contains  in  its  nature  a  temporal  succession.  Now 
a  process  in  time  is  appearance,  and  not,  as  such, 
holding  of  the  Absolute.  And,  if  we  urge  that 
thought  and  will  are  twin  processes  reciprocal  and 
compensating,  that  leaves  us  where  we  were.  For, 
as  such,  neitlier  can  be  a  predicate  of  the  real  unity, 
and  the  nature  of  that  unit)',  with  its  diversity  of 
appearance,  is  left  unexplained.  And  to  place  the 
whole  succession  in  time  on  the  side  of  mere  percep- 
tion, and  to  plead  that  will,  taken  by  itself,  is  not 
really  a  process,  would  hardly  serve  to  assist  us. 
For  if  will  has  a  content,  then  that  conteTit  is  per- 
ceptible and  must  imply  temporal  lapse,  and  will, 
after  all,  surely  can  stand  no  higher  than  that  which 
it  wills.  And,  without  an  ideal  content,  will  is 
nothing  but  a  blind  appeal  to  the  unknown.  It  is 
itself  unknown,  and  of  this  unknown  something  we 
are  forced  now  to  predicate  as  an  adjective  the  un- 


47° 


REALITY. 


explained  world  of  perception.  Thus,  in  the  end. 
will  and  thoucrht  are  two  names  for  two  kinds  of 
appearance.  Neither,  as  such,  can  belong  to  the 
final  Reality,  and,  in  the  end,  both  their  unity  and 
their  diversity  remains  inexplicable.  They  may  be 
offered  as  partial  and  as  relative,  but  not  as  ultimate 
explanations. 

But  if  their  unity  is  thus  unknown,  should  we  call 
it  tlieir  unity  ?  Have  they  any  right  to  arrogate  to 
themselves  the  whole  field  of  appearance  }  If  we 
are  to  postulate  thought  and  will  where  they  are  not 
observed,  we  should  at  least  have  an  inducement. 
And,  if  after  all  they  fail  to  explain  our  world,  the 
inducement  seems  gone.  Why  should  we  strain 
ourselves  to  bring  all  phenomena  under  two  heads, 
if,  when  we  have  forced  them  there,  these  heads, 
with  the  phenomena,  remain  unexplained.''  It  would 
be  surely  better  to  admit  that  appearances  are  of 
more  kinds,  and  have  more  aspects,  than  only  two, 
and  to  allow  that  their  unity  is  a  mode  of  experience 
not  directly  accessible.  And  this  result  is  confirmed 
when  we  recall  some  preceding  difficulties.  Pleasure 
and  pain,  feeling,  and  the  aesthetic  consciousness 
would  hardly  fall  under  any  mere  unity  of  intellig- 
ence and  will  ;  and  again  the  relation  of  sensible 
qualities  to  their  arrangements,  the  connection  of 
matter  with  form,  remained  entirely  inexplicable. 
In  short,  even  if  the  unity  of  thought  and  will  were 
by  itself  self-evident,  yet  the  various  aspects  of  the 
world  can  hardly  be  reduced  to  it.  And,  on  the 
other  side,  even  if  this  reduction  were  accomplished, 
the  identity  of  will  and  thought,  and  their  diversity, 
is  still  not  understood.  If  finltude  and  process  in 
time  is  reduced  to  their  divergence,  how  is  it  they 
come  to  diverge  ?  The  reduction  cannot  be  final, 
so  long  as  the  answer  to  such  a  question  falls  some- 
where outside  it. 


The  world  cannot  be  explained  as  the  appearance 


TIIK    ABSOLUTE   AND    ITS    API'EARANCKS. 


477 


ol  two  counterp;irt  functions,  and  with  this  result  we 
might  be  contented   to  pass  on.      But,  in  any  case, 
such  functions  could  not  be  identified  with  what  we 
know  as  intelligence  and  will  ;  and  it  may  be  better 
perhaps  for  a  little  to  dwell   on   this  point.      We 
assumed  above  that  will  and  thought  were  by  them- 
selves self-evident.     We  saw  tliat  there  was  a  doubt 
las  to  how  much  around  these  two  functions  covered. 
[Still  the  existence  of  an  idealizing  and  of  a  realizing 
Ifunction,  each  independent  and  pt-imary,  we  took  for 
fgranted.     Hut  now,  if  we  consider  the  facts  given 
[to  us  in  thinking  and  willing,  we  shall  have  to  admit 
'  that  the  powers  required  are  not  to  be  found.      For, 
I  apart  from  the  question  of  range,  will  and  thought 
are  nowhere  self-evident  or  primary.     Each  in  its 
working  depends  on  antecedent  coimections,  connec- 
tions which  remain   always  in  a  sense  external  and 
borrowed.     I  will  endeavour  briefly  to  explain  this. 
Thought    and    will   certainly  contain  transitions, 
and    these    transitions    were    taken    above    as   self- 
evident,     They  were  regarded  as  something  natur- 
ally involved  in  the  very  essence  of  these  functions, 
and  we  hence  did  not  admit  a  further  question  about' 
their  grounds.     But,  if  we  turn  to  thought  and  will 
in   our  experience,  such  an   assumption    is  refuted. 
For  in  actual  thinking  we  depend  upon  particular 
connections,  and,  apart  from  this  given  matter,  we 
should  be  surely  unable  to  think,    These  connections 
cannot  be  taken  all  as  inherent  in  the  mere  essence 
of  thought,  for,  most  of  tlieni  at  least  seem  to  be 
empirical  and  supplied  from  outside.      And  I  am 
entirely  unable  to  see  how  they  can  be  regarded  as 
self-evident.    This  result  is  confirmed  when  we  con- 
sider the  making  of  distinctions.      For.  in  the  first 
place,  distinctions  largely  seem   to  grow  up  apart 
I'rom  our  thinking,  in   the   proper  sense ;  and,  next, 
a  distinguishing  power  of  thought,  where  it  exists, 
appears  to  rest  on,  and  to  work  from,  prior  difference. 
It  is  thus  a  result  due  to  acquired  and  empirical  rela- 


>5 


v:  . 


N 


>^' 


478 


REALITV. 


Y 


tions.'     The  actual  transitions  of  thinking  are,    in 
short,  not  self-evident,  or,  to   use   another   phrase, 
they  cannot  be  taken  as  immanent  in  thought.    Nor, 
if  we  pass  to  volition,  do  we  find  its  processes  in  any 
better  case  ;  for  our  actions  neither  are  self-evident 
nor  are  they  immanent  in  will.    Let  us  abstract  from 
the  events   in   Nature  and  in  our  selves  with  which 
our  will  seems  not  concerned.     Let  us  confine  our 
attention  wholly  to  the  cases  where  our  idea  seems 
to  make  its  existence  in  fact.       But  is  the  transi- 
tion  here  a  thing  so  clear  that  it  demands  no  ex- 
planation ?     An  idea  desired  in  one  case  remains 
merely  desired,  in  another  case  it  turns  into  actual 
existence.     Why  then  the  one,  we  enquire,  and  not 
also  the  other?     "Because  in  the  second  place," 
you  may  reply,  "  there  is  an  action  of  will,  and  it  is 
this  act  which  explains  and  accounts  for  the  transi- 
tion."    Now  I  will  not  answer  here  that  it  is  the 
transition   which,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  act.      I 
will    for  the  moment  accept   the  existence  of  your 
preposterous  faculty.     But  I    repeat  the   question, 
why  is  one  thing  willed   and  not  also  the  other  ? 
Is  this  difference  self-evident,  and  self-luminous,  and 
a  feature  immediately  revealed  in  the  plain  essence 
of  will  .''     For,  if  it  is  not  so,  it  is  certainly  also  not 
explained  by  volition.    It  will  be  something  external 
to  the    function,    and    given    from    outside.       And 
thus,  with  will  and   thought  alike,  we   must  accept 
this  same  conclusion.     There  is  no  willing  or  think- 
ing apart  froni  the  particular  acts,  and  these  parti- 
cular acts,  as  will   and  thought,  are  clearly  not  self- 
evident.     They  involve  in  their  essences  a  connec- 
tion supplied  from  without.     And  will  and  thought 
therefore,  even    where    without    doubt    they    exist, 
are   dependent   and    secondary.       Nothing  can   be 
explained   in   the  end  by   a  reduction  to  either  of 
these  functions. 


'  On  lliis  point  see  MiiiJ,  No.  47. 


THE    ABSOLUTE   AND    ITS   AITEARANCES, 


479 


This  conclusion,  not  dependent  on  psychology, 
finds  itself  supported  and  confirmed  there.  For 
will  and  thought,  in  the  sense  in  which  wc  know 
them,  clearly  are  not  primary.  They  are  developed 
from  a  basis  which  is  not  yet  either,  and  which 
never  can  fully  become  so.  Their  existence  is  due 
to  psychical  events  and  ways  of  happening,  which 
are  not  distinctive  of  thought  or  will.  And  this 
basis  is  never,  so  to  speak,  quite  absorbed  by  either. 
They  are  differentiations  whose  peculiar  characters 
never  quite  specialize  all  their  contents.  In  other 
words  will  and  thought  tliroughout  depend  on  what 
is  not  essentially  either,  and,  without  these  psychical 
elements  which  remain  external,  their  processes 
would  cease.  There  is,  in  brief,  a  common  sub- 
stance with  common  laws ;  and  of  this  material  will 
and  thought  are  one-sided  applications.  F"ar  from 
exhausting  this  life,  they  are  contained  within  it  as 
subordinate  functions.  They  are  included  in  it  as 
dependent  and  partial  developments. 

Fully  to  work  out  this  truth  would  be  the 
business  of  psychology,  and  1  must  content  myself 
here  with  a  brief  notice  of  some  leading  points. 
Thought  is  a  development  from  a  ground  of  pre- 
ceding ideality.  The  division  of  content  from 
existence  is  not  created  but  throws.  The  laws  of 
Association  and  Blending  already  in  themselves 
imply  the  working  of  ideal  elements  ;  and  on  these 
laws  thought  stands  and  derives  from  them  its 
actual  processes.  It  is  the  blind  pressure  and  the 
struggle  of  changed  sensations,  which,  working 
together  with  these  laws,  first  begins  to  loosen  ideal 
content  from  psychical  fact.  And  hence  we  may 
say  that  thought  proper  is  the  outcome,  and  not  the 
creator,  of  idealizing  functions.  I  do  not  mean  that 
the  development  of  thought  can  be  fully  explained, 
since  that  would  imply  a  clear  insight  into  the 
general  origin  of  the  relational  form.  And  I  doubt 
if  we  can  follow  and  retrace  in  detail  the  transition 


48o 


REALITY. 


to  this  from  the  stage  of  mere  feeling.  But  I  would 
insist,  none  the  less,  that  some  distinguishing  is 
prior  to  thought  proper.  Synthesis  and  analysis, 
each  alike,  begin  as  psychical  growths  ;  each  pre- 
cedes and  then  is  specialized  and  organized  into 
thinking.  But,  if  so,  thought  is  not  ultimate.  It 
cannot  for  one  moment  claim  to  be  the  sole  parent 
and  source  of  ideality.' 

And  if  thought  is  taken  as   a  function  primary, 
and    from    the    first     implied    in    distinction     and 
synthesis,  even  on  this  mistaken  basis  its  dependent 
character  is  plain.     For  the  connections    and    dis- 
tinctions, the  idea!   relations,  in  which  thought  has 
its  being — from  where  do  they  come  .''     As  parti- 
cular they  consist  at  least  partly  in  what  is  special 
to  each,  and  these  special   natures,  at  least  partly, 
can  be  derived  from  no  possible  faculty  of  thinking. 
Thought's  relations  therefore  still  must  depend  on 
what  is  empirical.     They  are  in  part  the  result  of 
percejition  and  mere  psydiical  process.     Therefore 
(as    we   saw  above)   thought    must    rest   on    these 
foreign  materials  ;  and,  however  much  we  take  it  as 
primary  and    original,  it    is    still    not  independent. 
For  it  never  in  any  case  can  absorb  its  materials 
into   essential   functions.       Its    connections  may  be 
familiar   and     unnoticed,    and    its    sequences    may 
glide  without  a  break.      Nay  even  upon  reflection 
we  may  feel   convinced  that   our    special    arrange- 
ment is  true  system,  and  may  be  sure  that  somehow 
its  connections  are  not  based  on  mere  conjunction. 
But   if  we   ask,    on    the  other   hand,    if   this    ideal 
system  can  come  out  of  bare  thought,  or  can  be 
made  to  consist  in  it,  the  answer  must  be  different. 
Why  connections  in  particular  are  just  so,  and  not 
more  or  less  otherwise — this  can  be  explained  in  the 
end  by  no  faculty  of  thinking.     And  thus,  if  thought 
in  its  origin  is  not  secondary,  its  essence  remains  so. 
In  its  ideal  matter  it  is  a  result  from  mere  psychical 
'  With  the  above  compare,  again,  Mind,  No.  47. 


TIIK    ABSOLUTE    AND    ITS    APPEARANCES.         48 1 

growth,  its  ideal  connections  in  part  will  through- 
out be  pre-supposed  and  not  made  by  itself.  And 
a  connection,  supposed  to  be  made,  would  even  be 
disowned  as  a  fiction.  Hence,  on  any  psycho- 
logical view,  these  connections  are  not  inherent  and 
essential.  But  for  the  truer  view,  we  have  seen 
above,  thought  altogether  is  developed.  It  grows 
from,  and  still  it  consists  in,  processes  not  depend- 
ent on  itself.  And  the  result  may  be  summed  up 
thus ;  certainly  all  relations  are  ideal,  and  as  cer- 
tainly not  all  relations  are  products  of  thinking.' 

If  we  turn  to  volition,  psychology  makes  clear 
that  this  is  developed  and  secondary.  An  idea, 
barely  of  itself,  possesses  no  power  of  passing  over 
into  fact,  nor  is  there  any  faculty  whose  office  it  is 
to  carry  out  this  passage.  Or,  for  the  sake  of 
argument,  suppose  that  such  a  faculty  exists,  yet 
some  ideas  require  {as  we  saw)  an  extraneous  assist- 
ance. The  faculty  is  no  function,  in  short,  unless 
specially  provoked.  But  that  which  makes  will,  or 
at  least  makes  it  behave  as  itself,  is  surely  a  con- 
dition on  which  the  being  of  will  is  dependent. 
Will,  in  brief  is  based  on  associations,  psychical 
and  physical  at  once,  or,  again,  upon  mere  physio- 
logical connections.  It  pre-supposes  these,  and 
throughout  its  working  it  also  implies  them,  and  we 
are  hence  compelled  to  consider  them  as  part  of  its 
essence.  I  am  quite  aware  that  on  the  nature  of 
will  there  is  a  great  diversity  of  doctrine,  but  there 
are  some  views  which  I  feel  justified  in  not  consider- 
ing seriously.  For  any  sane  psychology  will  must 
pre-suppose,  and  must  rest  on,  junctions  physical 
and  psychical,  junctions  which  certainly  are  not 
will.  Nor  is  there  any  stage  of  its  growth  at  which 
will  has  absorbed  into  a  special  essence  these  pre- 

'  How  what  seems  a  faculty  of  analysis  can  be  developed  I 
have  endeavoured  to  point  out  in  the  article  above  referred  to. 
A.  R.  II 


482 


REALITY. 


supposed  workings.     But,  if  so,  assuredly  will  can- 
not be  taken  as  primary.' 

The  universe  as  a  whole  may  be  called  intelli- 
gible. It  may  be  known  to  come  together  in  such  a 
way  as  to  realize,  throughout  and  thoroughly,  the 
complete  demands  of  a  perfect  intellect.  And,  every 
single  element,  again,  in  the  world  is  intelligible, 
because  it  is  taken  up  into  and  absorbed  in  a  whole  of 
this  character.^  But  the  universe  is  not  intelligible  in 
the  sense  that  it  can  throughout  be  understood  ;  nor, 
starting  from  the  mere  intellect,  cuuld  you  anticipate 
its  features  in  detail.  For,  in  answering^  the  de- 
mands  of  the  intellect,  the  Whole  supplements  and 
makes  good  its  characteristic  defects,  so  that  the 
perfected  intellect,  with  these,  has  lost  its  own  special 
nature.  And  this  conclusion  holds  again  of  every 
other  aspect  of  things.  None  of  them  is  intelligible, 
as  such,  because,  when  become  intelligible,  they  have 
ceased  also,  as  such,  to  be.  Hence  no  single  aspect 
of  the  world  can  in  the  end  be  explained,  nor  can 
the  world  be  explained  as  the  result  either  of  any  or 
all  of  them.  We  have  verified  this  truth  above  in 
the  instance  of  thought  and  of  will.  Thought  is 
not  intelligible  because  its  particular  functions  are 
not  self-evident,  and  because,  again,  they  cannot  be 
derived  from,  or  shown  to  be  parts  immanent  in 
itself.  And  the  same  defect  once  more  belongs  also 
to  will.  I  do  not  mean  merely  that  will's  special 
passages  are  not  intellectual.  I  mean  that  they  are 
not  intelligible,  nor  by  themselves  luminous,  nor  in 
any  sense  self-evident.  They  are  occurrences 
familiar  more  or  less,  but  never  containing  each  in 
itself  its  own  essence  and  warrant.     That  essence, 

•  I  have  left  out  of  the  account  those  cases  where  what  works 
is  mainly  Blending.  Obviously  the  same  conclusion  follows 
here. 

2  It  is  intelligible  also,  I  have  remarked  above  in  Chapter  xlx., 
in  the  sense  of  being  distinguishable  content. 


Tlir;    ABSOLUTE    AND    ITS    AI'PEARANCES. 


483 


as  we  have  seen,  remains  a  fact  which  is  conditioned 
from  without,  and  it  therefore  remains  everywhere 
partly  alien.  It  is  futile  to  explain  the  whole  as  the 
unity  of  two  or  more  factors,  when  none  of  these 
can  by  itself  be  taken  as  evident,  and  when  the  way. 
in  Avhich  their  variety  is  brought  together,  remains 
in  detail  unintelligible. 

With  this  result  it  is  lime  that  we  went  forward,  but 
I  feel  compelled,  in  passing,  to  remark  on  the  alleged 
supremacy  of  Will.  In  the  first  place,  if  will  is 
Reality,  it  is  incumbent  on  us  to  show  how  appear- 
ance is  related  to  this  ground.  And,  on  our  failure, 
we  have  an  unknown  unity  behind  this  relation,  and 
will  itself  must  take  the  place  of  a  partial  appearance. 
But,  when  we  consider  will's  character,  the  same 
conclusion  is  in  any  case  plain.  What  we  know  as 
will  implies  relation  and  a  process,  and  an  unsolved 
discrepancy  of  elements.  And  the  same  remark 
holds  of  energy  or  activity,  or  of  anything  else  of 
the  kind.  Indeed,  I  have  dwelt  so  often  on  this 
head  that  I  must  consider  it  disposed  of  I  may, 
however,  be  told  perhaps  that  this  complexity  is  but 
the  appearance  of  will,  and  that  will  itself  the  real 
and  supreme,  is  something  other  and  different.  But, 
if  so,  the  relation  of  appearance  to  this  reality  is  once 
more  on  our  hands.  And,  even  apart  from  that, 
such  an  appeal  to  Will-in-itself  is  futile.  For  what 
we  know  as  will  contains  the  process,  and  what  we 
do  not  know  as  will  has  no  right  to  the  name.  It 
may  be  a  mere  physical  happening,  or  may  imply  a 
metaphysical  Reality,  and  in  either  case  we  have 
already  dealt  with  it  so  far  as  is  required.  In  short, 
an  appeal  to  will,  either  in  metaphysics  or  in  psycho- 
logy, is  an  uncritical  attempt  to  make  play  with  the 
unknown.  It  is  the  pretence  of  a  ground  or  an 
explanation,  where  the  ground  is  not  understood  or 
the  explanation  discovered.  And,  so  far  as  meta- 
physics is  concerned,  one  can  perhaps  account  for 


484 


REALITY. 


such  a  barren  self-deception.  The  mere  intellect 
has  shown  itself  incompetent  to  explain  all  pheno- 
mena, and  so  naturally  recourse  is  had  to  the  other 
side  of  things.  And  this  unknown  reality,  called  in 
thus  to  supply  the  defects  of  mere  intellect,  is  blindly 
identified  with  the  aspect  which  appears  most  op- 
posed. But  an  unknown  Reality,  more  than  intellect, 
a  something  which  appears  in  will  and  all  appearance, 
and  even  in  intellect  itself — such  a  reality  is  not  will 
or  any  other  partial  aspect  of  things.  We  really 
have  appealed  to  the  complete  and  all  inclusive 
totality,  free  from  one-sidedness  and  all  defect.  And 
we  have  called  this  will,  because  in  will  we  do  not 
find  one  defect  of  a  particular  kind.  But  such  a 
procedure  is  not  rational. 

An  attempt  may  perhaps  be  made  from  another 
side  to  defend  the  primacy  of  will.  It  may  be  urged 
that  all  principles  and  a.xioms  in  the  end  must  be 
practical,  and  must  accordingly  be  called  the  expres- 
sion of  will.  But  such  an  assertion  would  be  mis- 
taken. Axioms  and  principles  are  the  expression  of 
diverse  sides  of  our  nature,  and  they  most  certainly 
cannot  all  be  considered  as  practical.  In  our  various 
attitudes,  intellectual,  a;sthetic,  and  practical,  there 
are  certain  modes  of  experience  which  satisfy.  In 
these  modes  we  can  repose,  while,  again,  their  ab- 
sence brings  pain,  and  unrest,  and  desire.  And  we 
can  of  course  distinguish  these  characters  and  set 
them  up  as  ideals,  and  we  can  also  make  them  our 
ends  and  the  objects  of  will.  But  such  a  relation  to 
will  is,  except  in  the  moral  end,  not  inherent  in  their 
nature.  Indeed  the  reply  that  principles  are  willed 
because  they  are,  would  be  truer  than  the  assertion 
that  principles  are  just  because  they  are  willed. 
And  the  possible  objection  that  after  all  these  things 
are  objects  to  will,  has  been  anticipated  above  (p.  474). 
The  same  line  of  argument  obviously  would  prove 
that  the  intelligence  is  paramount,  since  it  reflects 
on   will  and   on   every   other  aspect  of  the  world. 


THIi    ABSOLUTE   AND    ITS    APPEARANCES.         485 

With  this  hurried  notice,  I  must  dismiss  finally  the 
alleged  pre-eminence  of  will.  This  must  remain 
always  a  muddy  refuge  for  the  troubled  in  philo- 
sophy. But  its  claims  appear  plausible  so  long 
only  as  darkness  obscures  them.  They  are  plainly 
absurd  where  they  do  not  prefer  to  be  nierely  unin- 
tellicrible. 

We  have  found  that  no  one  aspect  of  experience, 
as  such,  is  real.  None  is  primary,  or  can  serve  to 
explain  the  others  or  the  whole.  They  are  all  alike 
appearances,  all  one-sided,  and  passing  away  beyond 
themselves.  But  I  may  be  asked  why,  admitting 
this,  we  .should  call  them  appearances.  For  such  a 
term  belongs  solely  of  right  to  the  perceptional  side 
of  things,  and  the  perceptional  side,  we  agreed,  was 
but  one  aspect  among  others.  To  appear,  we  may 
be  told,  is  not  possible  except  to  a  percipient,  and  an 
appearance  also  implies  both  judgment  and  rejection. 
I  might  certainly,  on  the  other  side,  enquire  whether 
all  implied  metaphors  are  to  be  pressed,  and  if  so,  how 
many  phrases  and  terms  would  be  left  us.  But  in  the 
case  of  appearance  I  admit  at  once  that  the  objec- 
tion has  force.  I  think  the  term  implies  without 
doubt  an  aspect  of  perceiving  and  judging,  and  such 
an  aspect,  I  quite  agree,  does  not  everywhere  exist. 
For,  even  if  we  conclude  that  all  phenomena  pass 
through  psychical  centres,  yet  in  those  centres  most 
assuredly  all  is  not  perception.  And  to  assume 
that  somehow  in  the  Whole  all  phenomena  are 
judged  of,  would  be  again  indefensible.  We  must,  in 
short,  admit  that  some  appearances  really  do  not 
appear,  and  that  hence  a  license  is  involved  in  our 
use  of  the  term. 

Our  attitude,  however,  in  metaphysics  must  be 
theoretical.  It  is  our  business  here  to  measure  and 
to  judge  the  various  aspects  of  things.  And  hence 
for  us  anything,  which  comes  short  when  compared 
with  Reality,  gets  the  name  of  appearance.     But  we 


486  REALITY. 

do  not  suggest  that  the  thing  always  itself  is  an 
appearance.  We  mean  its  character  is  such  that  it 
becomes  one,  as  soon  as  we  judge  it  And  this 
character,  we  have  seen  throughout  our  work,  is 
ideality.  Appearance  consists  in  the  looseness  of 
content  from  existence ;  and,  because  of  this  self- 
estrangement,  every  finite  aspect  is  called  an  appear- 
ance. And  we  have  found  that  everywhere  through- 
out the  world  such  ideality  prevails.  Anything  less 
than  the  Whole  has  turned  out  to  be  not  self-con- 
tained. Its  being  involves  in  its  very  essence  a 
relation  to  the  outside,  and  it  is  thus  inwardly  infected 
by  externality.  Everywhere  the  finite  is  self-trans- 
cendent, alienated  from  itself,  and  passing  away  from 
itself  towards  another  existence.  Hence  the  finite 
is  appearance  because,  on  the  one  side,  it  is  an  adjec- 
tive of  Reality,  and  because,  on  the  other  side,  it  is 
an  adjective  which  itself  is  not  real.  When  the 
term  is  thus  defined,  its  employment  seems  certainly 
harmless. 

We  have  in  this  Chapter  been  mainly,  so  far,  con- 
cerned with  a  denial.     All  is  appearance,  and  no 
appearance,  or  any  combination  of  these,  is  the  same 
as  Reality.     This  is  half  the  truth,  and  by  itself  it 
I  is  a  dangerous  error.     We   must  turn  at  once  to 

correct  it  by  adding  its  counterpart  and  supplement. 
The  Absolute  t's  its  appearances,  it  really  is  all  and 
every  one  of  them.  That  is  the  other  half-truth 
which  we  have  already  insisted  on,  and  which  we 
must  urge  once  more  here.  And  we  may  remind 
ourselves  at  this  point  of  a  fatal  mistake.  If  you 
take  appearances,  singly  or  all  together,  and  assert 
3  barely  that  the  Absolute  is  either  one  of  them  or  all 

j  — the  position  is  hopeless.     Having  first  set  these 

I  down  as  appearance,  you  now  proclaim  them  as  the 

'  very  opposite  ;  for  that  which  is  identified  with  the 

i  Absolute  is  no  appearance  but  is  utter  reality.     But 

we  have  seen  the  solution  of  this  puzzle,  and  we 


THE   ABSOLUTE    AND    ITS   APPEARANCES. 


487 


jknow  the  sense  and  meaning  in  which  these  half- 
truths  come  together  into  one.  The  Absokite  is  each 
appearance,  and  is  all,  but  it  is  not  any  one  as  such. 
And  it  is  not  all  equally,  but  one  appearance  is  more 
real  than  another.  In  short  the  doctrine  of  degrees 
in  reality  and  truth  is  the  fundamental  answer  to  our 
roblem.  Everything  is  essential,  and  yet  one  thing 
jis  worthless  in  comparison  with  others.  Nothing  is 
erfect,  as  such,  and  yet  everything  in  some  degree 
ontains  a  vital  function  of  Perfection.  Every  atti- 
tude of  experience,  every  sphere  or  level  of  the 
world,  is  a  necessary  factor  in  the  Absolute.  Each 
in  its  own  way  satisfies,  until  compared  with  that 
which  is  more  tlian  itself.  Hence  appearance  is  ' 
error,  if  you  will,  but  not  every  error  is  illusion.* 
At  each  stage  is  involved  the  principle  of  that  which 
is  higher,  and  every  stage  (it  is  therefore  true)  is 
already  inconsistent.  But  on  the  other  hand,  taken 
for  itself  and  measured  by  its  own  ideas,  every  level 
has  truth.  It  meets,  we  may  say,  its  own  claims, 
and  it  proves  false  only  when  tried  by  that  which  is 
already  beyond  it.  And  thus  the  Absolute  is  im- 
manent alike  through  every  region  of  appearances. 
There  are  degrees  and  ranks,  but,  one  and  all,  they 
are  alike  indispensable. 

We  can  find  no  province  of  the  world  so  low  but  the 
Absolute  inhabits  it.  Nowhere  is  there  even  a  single 
fact  so  fragmentary  and  so  poor  that  to  the  universe 
it  does  not  matter.  There  is  truth  in  every  idea 
however  false,  there  is  reality  in  every  e.\istence  how- 
ever slight ;  and,  where  we  can  point  to  reality  or 
truth,  there  is  the  one  undivided  life  of  the  Abso- 
lute. Appearance  without  reality  would  be  impos- 
sible, for  what  then  could  appear .'  And  reality 
without  appearance  would  be  nothing,  for  there  cer- 
tainly is  nothing  outside  appearances.  But  on  the 
other  hand  Reality  (we  must  repeat  this)  is  not  the 

'  On  the  difference  between  these  see  Chapter  xxvii. 


488 


REALITY. 


sum  of  things.  It  is  the  unity  in  which  all  things, 
coming  together,  arc  transmuted,  in  which  they  are 
changed  all  alike,  though  not  changed  equally.  And, 
as  we  have  perceived,  in  this  unity  relations  of  isola- 
tion and  hostility  are  affirmed  and  absorbed.  These 
also  are  harmonious  in  the  Whole,  though  not  of 
course  harmonious  as  such,  and  while  severally  con- 
fined to  their  natures  as  separate.  Hence  it  would 
show  blindness  to  urge,  as  an  objection  against  our 
view,  the  opposition  found  in  ugliness  and  in 
conscious  evil.  The  extreme  of  hostility  implies  an 
intenser  relation,  and  this  relation  falls  within  the 
Whole  and  enriches  its  unity.  The  apparent  discord- 
ance and  distraction  is  overruled  into  harmony,  and 
it  is  but  the  condition  of  fuller  and  more  individual 
development.  But  we  can  hardly  speak  of  the  Ab- 
solute itself  as  either  ugly  or  evil.  The  Absolute  is 
indeed  evil  in  a  sense  and  it  is  ugly  and  false,  but 
the  sense,  in  which  these  predicates  can  be  applied, 
is  too  forced  and  unnatural.  Used  of  the  Whole 
each  predicate  would  be  the  result  of  an  indefensible 
division,  and  each  would  be  a  fragment  isolated  and 
by  itself  without  consistent  meaning.  Ugliness, 
evil,  and  error,  in  their  several  spheres,  are  subor- 
dinate aspects.  They  imply  distinctions  falling,  in 
each  case,  within  one  subject  province  of  the  Abso- 
lute's kingdom  ;  and  they  involve  a  relation,  in  each 
case,  of  some  struggling  element  to  its  superior, 
though  limited,  whole.  Within  these  minor  wholes 
the  opposition  draws  its  life  from,  and  is  overpowered 
by  the  system  which  supports  it.  The  predicates 
evil,  ugly,  and  false  must  therefore  stamp,  whatever 
they  qualify,  as  a  mere  subordinate  aspect,  an  aspect 
belonging  to  the  province  of  beauty  or  goodness  or 
truth.  And  to  assign  such  a  position  to  the  sove- 
reign Absolute  would  be  plainly  absurd.  You  may 
affirm  that  the  Absolute  has  ugliness  and  error  and 
evil,  since  it  owns  the  provinces  in  which  these 
features  are  partial  elements.     But  to  assert  that  it 


THE    ABSOLUTK    AND    ITS   APPEARANXES. 


489 


is  one  of  its  own  fragmentary  and  dependent  details 
would  be  inadmissible. 

It  is  only  by  a  licence  that  the  subject-systems, 
even  when  we  regard  them  as  wholes,  can  be  made 
qualities  of  Reality.  It  is  always  under  correction 
and  on  sufferance  that  we  term  the  universe  either 
beautiful  or  moral  or  true.  And  to  venture  further 
would  be  both  useless  and  dangerous  at  once. 

If  you  view  the  Absolute  morally  at  all,  then  the 
Absolute  is  good,  It  cannot  be  one  factor  con- 
tained within  and  overpowered  by  goodness.  In 
the  same  way,  viewed  logically  or  aesthetically,  the 
Absolute  can  only  be  true  or  beautiful.  It  is 
merely  when  you  have  so  termed  it,  and  while 
you  still  continue  to  insist  on.  these  preponderant 
characters,  that  you  can  introduce  at  all  the  ideas  of 
falsehood  and  ugliness.  And,  so  introduced,  their 
direct  application  to  the  Absolute  is  impossible. 
Thus  to  identify  the  supreme  universe  with  a  partial 
system  may,  for  some  end,  be  admissible.  But  to 
take  it  as  a  single  character  within  this  system,  and 
as  a  feature  which  is  already  overruled,  and  which 
as  such  is  suppressed  there,  would,  we  have  seen,  be 
quite  unwarranted.  Ugliness,  error,  and  evil,  all 
arc  owned  by,  and  all  essentially  contribute  to  the 
wealth  of  the  Absolute.  The  Absolute,  we  may 
say  in  general,  has  no  assets  beyond  appearances ; 
and  again,  with  appearances  alone  to  its  credit,  the 
Absolute  would  be  bankrupt.  All  of  these  are 
worthless  alike  apart  from  transmutation.  But.  on 
the  other  hand  once  more,  since  the  amount  of 
change  is  different  in  each  case,  appearances  differ 
widely  in  their  degrees  of  truth  and  reality.  There 
are  predicates  which,  in  comparison  with  others,  are 
false  and  unreal. 

To  survey  the  field  of  appearances,  to  measure 
each  by  the  idea  of  perfect  individuality,  and  to 
arrange  them  in  an  order  and  in  a  system  of  reality 
and  merit — would  be  the  task  of  metaphysics.     This 


I 


490 


REALITY. 


task  (I  may  repeat)  is  not  attempted  in  these  pages. 
I  have  however  endeavoured  here,  as  above,  to 
explain  and  to  insist  on  the  fundamental  principle. 
And,  passing  from  that,  I  will  now  proceed  to  re- 
mark on  some  points  of  interest.  There  are  certain 
questions  which  at  this  stage  we  may  hope  to  dis- 
pose of 

Let  us  turn  our  attention  once  more  to  Nature  or 
the  physical  world.  Are  we  to  affirm  that  ideas  are 
forces,  and  that  ends  operate  and  move  there  ? 
And,  again,  is  Nature  beautiful  and  an  object  of 
possible  worship  ?  On  this  latter  point,  which  I 
will  consider  first,  1  find  serious  confusion.  Nature, 
as  we  have  seen,  can  be  taken  in  various  senses 
(Chapter  xxii.).  We  may  understand  by  it  the 
whole  universe,  or  again  merely  the  world  in  space, 
or  again  we  may  restrict  it  to  a  very  much  narrower 
meaning.  We  may  first  remove  everything  which 
in  our  opinion  is  only  psychical,  and  the  abstract 
residue — the  primary  qualities — we  may  then  iden- 
tify with  Nature.  These  will  be  the  essence,  while 
all  the  rest  is  accessory  adjective,  and,  in  the  fullest 
sense,  is  immaterial.  Now  we  have  found  that 
Nature,  so  understood,  has  but  little  reality.  It  is  an 
ideal  construction  required  by  science,  and  it  is  a 
necessary  working  fiction.  And  we  may  add  that 
reduction  to  a  result,  and  to  a  particular  instance,  of 
this  fiction,  is  what  is  meant  by  a  strictly  physical 
e-xplanation.  But  in  this  way  there  grows  up  a  great 
confusion.  P""or  the  object  of  natural  science  is  the 
full  world  in  all  its  sensible  glory,  while  the  essence 
of  Nature  lies  in  this  poor  fiction  of  primary 
qualities,  a  fiction  believed  not  to  be  idea  but  solid 
fact.  Nature  then,  while  unexplained,  is  still  left  in 
its  sensuous  splendour,  while  Nature,  if  explained, 
would  be  reduced  to  this  paltry  abstraction.  On 
one  side  is  set  up  the  essence — the  final  reality — in 
the  shape  of  a  bare  skeleton  of  primary  qualities  ; 


Tmc    ABSOLUTK   AND    ITS   APPEARANCES. 


491 


on  the  other  side  remains  the  boundless  profusion  of 
life  which  everywhere  opens  endlessly  before  our 
view.  And  these  extremes  then  are  confused,  or 
are  conjoined,  by  sheer  obscurity  or  else  by  blind 
mental  oscillation.  If  explanation  reduces  facts  to  be 
adjectives  of  something  which  they  do  not  qualify 
at  all,  the  whole  connection  seems  irrational,  and  the 
process  robs  us  of  the  facts.  But  if  the  primary 
essence  after  all  is  qualified,  then  its  character  is 
transformed.  The  explanation,  in  reducing  the 
concrete,  will  now  also  have  enriched  and  have  indi- 
vidualized the  abstract,  and  we  shall  have  started  on 
our  way  towards  philosophy  and  truth.  But  of  this 
latter  result  in  the  present  case  there  can  be  no 
question.  And  therefore  wc  must  end  in  oscillation 
with  no  attempt  at  an  intelligent  unity  of  view. 
Nature  is,  on  the  one  hand,  that  show  whose  reality 
lies  barely  in  primary  qualities.  It  is,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  endless  world  of  sensible  life,  which 
appeals  to  our  sympathy  and  extorts  our  wonder. 
It  is  the  object  loved  and  lived  in  by  the  poet  and 
by  the  observing  naturalist.  And,  when  we  speak 
of  Nature,  we  have  often  no  idea  which  of  these 
extremes,  or  indeed  what  at  all,  is  to  be  understood. 
We  in  fact  pass,  as  suits  the  occasion,  from  one 
extreme  unconsciously  to  the  other. 

I  will  briefly  apply  this  result  to  the  question 
before  us.  Whether  Nature  is  beautiful  and  ador- 
able will  depend  entirely  on  the  sense  in  which 
Nature  is  taken.  If  the  genuine  reality  of  Nature 
is  bare  primary  qualities,  then  I  cannot  think  that 
such  a  question  needs  serious  discussion.  In  a 
word  Nature  will  be  dead.  It  could  possess  at  the 
most  a  kind  of  symmetry  ;  and  again  by  its  extent, 
or  by  its  practical  relation  to  our  weaknesses  or 
needs,  it  mi^^ht  excite  in  us  feelings  of  a  certain 
kind.  But  these  feelings,  in  the  first  place,  would 
fall  absolutely  within  ourselves.  They  could  not 
rationally  be  applied  to,  nor  in  the  very  least  could 


492 


REALITY. 


they  qualify  Nature.  And,  in  the  second  place, 
these  feelings  would  in  our  minds  hardly  take  the 
form  of  worship.  Hence  when  Nature,  as  the  object 
of  natural  science,  is  either  asserted  to  be  beautiful, 
or  is  set  up  before  us  as  divine,  we  may  make  our 
answer  at  once.  If  the  reality  of  the  object  is  to  be 
restricted  to  primary  qualities,  then  surely  no  one 
would  advocate  the  claims  we  have  mentioned.  If 
again  the  whole  perceptible  world  and  the  glory  of 
it  is  to  be  genuinely  real,  and  if  this  splendour  and 
this  life  are  of  the  very  essence  of  Nature,  then  a 
difficulty  will  arise  in  two  directions.  In  the  first 
place  this  claim  has  to  get  itself  admitted  by  phys- 
ical science.  The  psychical  has  to  be  adopted  cis  at 
least  co-equal  in  reality  with  matter.  The  relation 
to  the  organism  and  to  the  soul  has  to  be  included 
in  the  vital  being  of  a  physical  object.  And  the 
first  difficulty  will  consist  in  advancing  to  this  point. 
Then  the  second  difficulty  will  appear  at  once 
when  this  point  has  been  reached.  For,  having 
gone  so  far,  we  have  to  justifj-  our  refusal  to  go 
further.  For  why  is  Nature  to  be  confined  to  the 
perceptible  world  .■'  If  the  psychical  and  the  "sub- 
jective "  is  in  any  degree  to  make  part  of  its  reality, 
then  upon  what  principle  can  you  shut  out  the 
highest  and  most  spiritual  experience  ?  Why  is 
Nature  viewed  and  created  by  the  painter,  the  poet, 
and  the  seer,  not  essentially  real  .'*  But  in  this  way 
Nature  will  tend  to  become  the  total  universe  of 
both  spirit  and  matter.  And  our  main  conclusion 
so  far  must  be  this.  It  is  evidently  useless  to  raise 
such  questions  about  the  object  of  natural  science, 
when  you  have  not  settled  in  your  mind  what  that 
object  is,  and  when  you  supply  no  principle  on 
which  we  can  decide  in  what  its  reality  consists. 

But  turning  from  this  confusion,  and  once  more 
approaching  the  question  from,  I  trust,  a  more 
rational  ground,  I  will  try  to  make  a  brief  answer. 
Into  the  special  features  and  limits  of  the  beautiful  in 


THE   ABSOLUTE   AND    ITS    APPEARANCES. 


493 


Nature  I  cannot  enter.  And  I  cannot  discuss  how 
far,  and  in  what  sense,  the  physical  world  is  in- 
cluded in  the  true  object  of  religion.  These  are 
special  enquiries  which  fall  without  the  scope  of  my 
volume.  But  whether  Nature  is  beautiful  or  ador- 
able at  all,  and  whether  it  possesses  such  attributes 
really  and  in  truth, — to  the  question,  asked  thus  in 
general,  we  may  answer.  Yes.  We  have  seen  that 
Nature,  regarded  as  bare  matter,  is  a  mere  con- 
venient abstraction  (Chapter  xxii.).  The  addition  of 
secondary  qualities,  the  included  relation  to  a  body 
and  to  a  soul,  in  making  Nature  more  concrete  makes 
it  thereby  more  real.'  The  sensible  life,  the  warmth 
and  colour,  the  odour  and  the  tones,  without  these 
Nature  is  a  mere  intellectual  fiction.  The  primary 
qualities  are  a  construction  demanded  by  science, 
but,  while  divorced  from  the  secondary,  they  have 
no  life  as  facts.  Science  has  a  Hades  from  which  it 
returns  to  interpret  the  world,  but  the  inhabitants 
of  its  Hades  are  merely  shades.  And,  when  the 
secondary  qualities  are  added,  Nature,  though  more 
real,  is  still  incomplete.  The  joys  and  sorrows  of 
her  children,  their  affections  and  their  thoughts — 
how  are  we  to  say  that  these  have  no  part  in  the 
reality  of  Nature  ?  Unless  to  a  mind  restricted  by 
a  principle  the  limitation  would  be  absurd,  and  our 
main  principle  on  the  other  hand  insists  that  Nature, 
when  more  full,  is  more  real.  And  this  same  prin- 
ciple will  carry  us  on  to  a  further  conclusion.  The 
emotions,  excited  by  Nature  in  the  considering  soul, 
must  at  least  in  part  be  referred  to,  and  must  be 
taken  as  attributes  of  Nature.  If  there  is  no  beauty 
there,  and  if  the  sense  of  that  is  to  fall  somewhere 
outside,  why  in  the  end  should  there  be  any  qualities 
in  Nature  at  all  ?  And,  if  no  emotional  tone  is  to 
qualify  Nature,  how  and  on  what  principle  are  we  to 

'  I  do  not  think  it  necessary  to  restate  any  qualification  re- 
([uired  here  by  parts  of  Nature  taken  as  not  perceived.  I  hn\c 
dealt  with  this  sufticiently  in  Chapters  .xxii.  and  xxiv. 


494 


REALiry, 


attribute  to  it  anything  else  whatever  ?  Everything' 
there  without  exception  is  "  subjective,"  if  we  are 
to  regard  the  matter  so ;  and  an  emotional  tone 
cannot,  solely  on  this  account,  be  excluded  from 
Nature.  And,  otherwise,  why  should  it  not  have 
reality  there  as  a  genuine  quality  ?  For  myself  I 
must  follow  the  same  principle  and  can  accept  the 
fresh  consequence.  The  Nature  that  we  have  lived 
in,  and  that  we  love,  is  really  Nature.  Its  beauty 
and  its  terror  and  its  majesty  are  no  illusion,  but 
qualify  it  essentially.  And  hence  that,  in  which  at 
our  best  moments  we  all  are  forced  to  believe,  is  the 
literal  truth. 

This  result  however  needs  some  qualification  from 
anotlier  side.  It  is  certain  that  everything  is  deter- 
mined by  the  relations  in  which  it  stands.  It  is 
certain  that,  with  increase  of  determinateness,  a 
thing  becomes  more  and  more  real.  On  the  other 
hand  anything,  fully  determined,  would  be  the  Ab- 
solute itself  There  is  a  point  where  increase  of 
reality  implies  passage  beyond  self.  A  thing  by 
enlargement  becomes  a  mere  factor  in  the  whole 
next  above  it ;  and,  in  the  end,  all  provinces  and 
all  relative  wholes  cease  to  keep  their  separate 
characters.  We  must  not  forget  this  while  consider- 
ing the  reality  of  Nature.  By  gradual  increase  of 
that  reality  you  reach  a  stage  at  which  Nature,  as 
such,  is  absorbed.  Or,  as  you  reflect  on  Nature, 
your  object  identifies  itself  gradually  with  the  uni- 
verse or  Absolute.  And  the  question  arises  at  what 
point,  when  we  begin  to  add  psychical  life  or  to 
attribute  spiritual  attributes  to  Nature,  we  have 
ceased  to  deal  with  Nature  in  any  proper  sense  of 
that  term.  Where  do  we  pass  from  Nature,  as  an 
outlying  province  in  the  kingdom  of  things,  to 
Nature  as  a  suppressed  element  in  a  higher  unity  ? 
These  enquiries  are  demanded  by  philosophy,  and 
their  result  would  lead  to  clearer  conclusions  about 
the  qualities  of  Nature.     I   can  do  no  more  than 


THE  ABSOLUTE  AND  ITS  APPEARANCES. 


495 


allude  to  them  here,  and  the  conclusion,  on  which 
I  insist,  can  in  the  main  be  urged  independently. 
Nothing  is  lost  to  the  Absolute,  and  all  appearances 
have  reality.  The  Natiu'e,  studied  by  the  observer 
and  by  the  poet  and  painter,  is  in  all  its  sensible 
and  emotional  fulness  a  very  real  Nature.  It  is  in 
most  respects  more  real  than  the  strict  object  of 
physical  science.  For  Nature,  as  the  world  whose 
real  essence  lies  in  primary  qualities,  has  not  a  high 
degree  of  reality  and  truth.  It  is  a  mere  abstrac- 
tion made  and  required  for  a  certain  purpose.  And 
the  object  of  natural  science  may  either  mean  this 
skeleton,  or  it  may  mean  the  skeleton  made  real 
by  blood  and  flesh  of  secondary  qualities.  Hence, 
before  we  dwell  on  the  feelings  Nature  calls  for 
from  us,  it  would  be  better  to  know  in  what  sense  we 
are  using  tlie  term.  But  the  boundary  of  Nature 
can  hardly  be  drawn  eveo  at  secondary  qualities. 
Or,  if  we  draw  it  there,  we  must  draw  it  arbitrarily, 
and  to  suit  our  convenience.  Only  on  this  ground 
can  psychical  life  be  excluded  from  Nature,  while, 
regarded  otherwise,  the  exclusion  would  not  be 
tenable.  And  to  deny  aesthetic  qualities  in  Nature, 
or  to  refuse  it  those  which  inspire  us  with  fear  or 
devotion,  would  once  more  surely  be  arbitrary.  It 
would  be  a  division  introduced  for  a  mere  work- 
ing theoretical  purpose.  Our  principle,  that  the 
abstract  is  the  unreal,  moves  us  steadily  upward. 
It  forces  us  first  to  rejection  of  bare  primary 
qualities,  and  it  compels  us  in  the  end  to  credit 
Nature  with  our  higher  emotions.  That  process 
can  cease  only  where  Nature  is  quite  absorbed  into 
spirit,  and  at  every  stage  of  the  process  we  find 
increase  in  reality. 

And  this  higher  interpretation,  and  this  eventual 
transcendence  of  Nature  lead  us  to  the  discussion 
of  another  [)oint  which  we  mentioned  above.  Ex- 
cept in  finite  souls  and  except  in  volition   may  we 


496 


REALITY. 


suppose  that  Ends  operate  in  Nature,  and  is  ideality, 
in  any  other  sense,  a  working  force  there  ?  How 
far  such  a  point  of  view  may  be  permitted  in 
iesthetics  or  in  the  philosophy  of  religion,  I  shall 
not  enquire.  But  considering  the  physical  world 
as  a  mere  system  of  appearances  in  space,  are  we 
on  metaphysical  grounds  to  urge  the  insufficiency 
of  the  mechanical  view  ?  In  what  form  (if  in  any)  are 
we  to  advocate  a  philosophy  of  Nature  i  On  this 
difficult  subject  1  will  very  briefly  remark  in  passing. 
The  mechanical  view  plainly  is  absurd  as  a 
full  statement  of  truth.  Nature  so  regarded  has 
not  ceased  at  all  (we  may  say)  to  be  ideal,  but  its 
ideality  throughout  falls  somewhere  outside  itself 
(Chaj)ters  .\xii.  and  .x.xiii.).  And  that  even  for  work- 
ing purposes  this  view  can  everywhere  be  rigidly 
maintained,  I  am  unable  to  assert.  But  upon  one 
subject  I  have  no  doubts.  Every  special  science 
must  be  left  at  liberty  to  follow  its  own  methods, 
and,  if  the  natural  sciences  reject  every  way  of  ex- 
planation which  is  not  mechanical,  that  is  not  the 
affair  of  metaphysics.  For  myself,  in  other  ways 
ignorant,  1  venture  to  assume  that  these  sciences 
understand  their  own  business.  But  where,  quite 
beyond  the'  scope  of  any  special  science,  assertions 
are  made,  the  metaphysician  may  protest.  He  may 
insist  that  abstractions  are  not  realities,  and  that 
working  fictions  are  never  more  than  useful  frag- 
ments of  truth.  And  on  another  point  also  he  may 
claim  a  hearing.  To  adopt  one  sole  principle  of 
valid  explanation,  and  to  urge  that,  if  phenomena 
are  to  be  explicable,  they  must  be  explained  by  one 
method — this  is  of  course  competent  to  any  science. 
But  it  is  another  thing  to  proclaim  phenomena  as 
already  explained,  or  as  explicable,  where  in  certain 
aspects  or  in  certain  provinces  they  clearly  are  not 
explained,  and  where,  perhaps,  not  even  the  first 
beginning  of  an  explanation  has  been  made.  In 
these  lapses  or  excursions  beyond   its  own  limits 


THE  ABSOLUTE   AND    ITS    APPEARANCES.         49  ^ 

natural  science  has  no  rights.  But  within  its  bound- 
aries I  think  every  wise  man  will  consider  it  sacred. 
And  this  question  of  the  operation  of  Ends  in 
Nature  is  one  which,  in  my  judgment,  metaphysics 
should  leave  untouched. 

Is  there  then  no  positive  task  which  is  left  to 
metaphysics,  the  accomplishment  of  which  might  be 
called  a  philosophy  of  Nature  ?  I  will  briefly  point 
out  the  field  which  seems  to  call  for  occupation. 
All  appearances  for  metaphysics  have  degrees  of 
reality.  We  have  an  idea  of  perfection  or  of  in- 
dividuality ;  and,  as  we  find  that  any  form  of  exist- 
ence more  completely  realizes  this  idea,  we  assign 
to  it  its  position  in  the  scale  of  being.  And  in  this 
scale  (as  we  have  seen)  the  lower,  as  its  defects  are 
made  good,  passes  beyond  itself  into  the  higher. 
The  end,  or  the  absolute  individuality,  is  also  the 
principle.  Present  from  the  first  it  supplies  the  test 
of  its  inferior  stages,  and,  as  these  are  included  in 
fuller  wholes,  the  principle  grows  in  reality.  Meta- 
physics in  short  can  assign  a  meaning  to  perfection 
and  progress.  And  hence,  if  it  were  to  accept  from 
the  sciences  the  various  kinds  of  natural  phenomena, 
if  it  were  to  set  out  these  kinds  in  an  ord^r  of  merit 
and  rank,  if  it  could  point  out  how  within  each 
higher  grade  the  defects  of  the  lower  are  made 
good,  and  how  the  principle  of  the  lower  grade  is 
carried  out  in  the  higher — metaphysics  surely  would 
have  contributed  to  the  interpretation  of  Nature. 
And,  while  myself  totally  incapable  of  even  assist- 
ing in  such  a  work,  I  cannot  see  how  or  on  what 
ground  it  should  be  considered  unscientific.  It  is 
doubtless  absurd  to  wear  the  airs  of  systematic 
omniscience.  It  is  worse  than  absurd  to  pour  scorn 
on  the  detail  and  on  the  narrowness  of  devoted 
specialism.  But  to  try  to  give  system  from  time  to 
time  to  the  results  of  the  sciences,  and  to  attempt 
to  arrange  these  on  what  seems  a  true  principle 
of  worth,  can  be  hardly  irrational 

KK 


498 


REALITY. 


Such  a  philosophy  of  Nature,  if  at  least  It  wer« 
true  to  itself,  could  not  intrude  on  the  province  ot 
physical  science.  For  it  would,  in  short,  abstain 
wholly  and  in  every  form  from  speculation  on  gene- 
sis. How  the  various  stages  of  progress  come  to 
happen  in  time,  in  what  order  or  orders  they  follow, 
and  in  each  case  from  what  causes,  these  enquiries 
would,  as  such,  be  no  concern  of  philosophy.  Its 
idea  of  evolution  and  progress  in  a  word  should  not 
be  temporal.  And  hence  a  conflict  with  the  scienceg 
upon  any  question  of  development  or  of  order  could 
not  properly  arise.  "  Higher"  and  "lower,"  termg 
which  imply  always  a  standard  and  end,  would  tit 
philosophy  be  applied  solely  to  designate  rank, 
Natural  science  would  still  be  free,  as  now,  to  usq 
or  even  to  abuse,  such  terms  at  its  pleasure,  and  tc 
allow  them  any  degree  of  meaning  which  is  founc 
convenient.  Progress  for  philosophy  would  nevei 
have  any  temporal  sense,  and  it  could  matter  nothing 
if  the  word  elsewhere  seemed  to  bear  little  or  nc 
other.  With  these  brief  remarks  1  must  leave  a 
subject  which  deserves  serious  attention. 

In  a  complete  philosophy  the  whole  world  ol 
appearance  would  be  set  out  as  a  progress.  I| 
would  show  a  development  of  principle  though  no| 
a  succession  in  time.  Every  sphere  of  experience 
would  be  measured  by  the  absolute  standard,  and, 
would  be  given  a  rank  answering  to  its  own  relative 
merits  and  defects.  On  this  scale  pure  Spirit  would 
mark  the  extreme  most  removed  from  lifeless  Na- 
ture. And,  at  each  rising  degree  of  this  scale,  we 
should  find  more  of  ihe  first  character  with  less  ol 
the  second.  The  ideal  of  spirit,  we  may  say,  is 
directly  opposite  to  mechanism.  Spirit  is  a  unity 
of  the  manifold  in  which  the  externality  of  the  mani- 
fold has  utterly  ceased.  The  universal  here  is  imi 
'manent  in  the  parts,  and  its  system  does  not  lie  some- 
where outside  and  in  the  relations  between  them. 
It  is  above  the  relational  form  and  has  absorbed  i( 


TIIK   ABSOLUTE   AND    ITS    APPEARANCES. 


499 


in  a  higher  unity,  a  whole  in  which  there  is  no 
division  between  elements  and  laws.  And,  since 
this  principle  shows  itself  from  the  first  in  the  in- 
consistencies of  bare  mechanism,'  we  may  say  that 
Nature  at  once  is  realized  and  transmuted  by  spirit. 
But  each  of  these  extremes,  we  must  add,  has  no 
existence  as  fact.  The  sphere  of  dead  mechanism 
is  set  apart  by  an  act  of  abstraction,  and  in  that 
abstraction  alone  it  essentially  consists.  And,  on 
the  other  hand,  pure  spirit  is  not  realized  except  in 
the  Absolute.  It  can  never  appear  as  such  and 
with  its  full  character  in  the  scale  of  existence. 
Perfection  and  individuality  belong  only  to  that 
Whole  in  which  all  degrees  alike  are  at  once  present 
and  absorbed.  This  one  Reality  of  existence  can, 
as  such,  nowhere  exist  among  phenomena.  And  it 
enters  into,  but  is  itself  incapable  of,  evolution  and 
progress. 

It  may  repay  us  to  discuss  the  truth  of  this  last 
statement  Is  there,  in  the  end  and  on  the  whole, 
any  progress  in  the  universe  ?  Is  the  Absolute 
better  or  worse  at  one  time  than  at  another  .-•  It  is 
clear  that  we  must  answer  in  the  negative,  since 
progress  and  decay  are  alike  incompatible  with  per- 
fection. There  is  of  course  progress  in  the  world, 
and  there  is  also  retrogression,  but  we  cannot  think 
that  the  Whole  either  moves  on  or  backwards. 
The  Absolute  has  no  history  of  its  own,  though  it 
contains  histories  without  number.  These,  with 
their  tale  of  progress  or  decline,  are  constructions 
starting  from  and  based  on  some  one  given  piece 
of  finitude.  They  are  but  partial  aspects  in  the  re- 
gion of  temporal  appearance.  Their  truth  and 
reality  may  vary  much  in  extent  and  in  importance, 
but  in  the  end  it  can  never  be  more  than  relative. 

*  The  defect  and  the  partial  supersession  of  mere  mechanical 
law  has  been  touched  on  in  Chapters  xxii.  and  xxiii.  It  would  be 
possible  to  add  a  good  deal  more  on  this  head. 


500 


REALITY. 


And  the  question  whether  the  history  of  a  man  or  a 
world  is  going  forwards  or  back,  does  not  belong  to 
metaph)sics.  1'  or  nothing  perfect,  nothing  genuinely 
real,  can  move.  The  Absolute  has  no  seasons,  but 
all  at  once  bears  its  leaves,  fruit,  and  blossoms.' 
Like  our  globe  it  always,  and  it  never,  has  summer 
and  winter. 

Such  a  point  of  view,  if  it  disheartens  us,  has 
been  misunderstood.  It  is  only  by  our  mistake  that 
it  collides  with  practical  belief  If  into  the  world  of 
goodness,  possessing  its  own  relative  truth,  you  will 
directly  thrust  in  ideas  which  apply  only  to  the 
Whole,  the  fault  surely  is  yours.  The  Absolute's 
character,  as  such,  cannot  hold  of  the  relative,  but 
the  relative,  unshaken  for  all  that,  holds  its  place  in 
the  Absolute.  Or  again,  shutting  yourself  up  in 
the  region  of  practice,  will  you  insist  upon  applying 
its  standards  to  the  universe  ?  We  want  for  our 
practice,  of  course,  both  a  ha|)pening  in  time  and  a 
personal  finitude.  We  require  a  capacity  for  be- 
coming better,  and,  1  suppose  too,  for  becoming 
worse.  And  if  these  features,  as  such,  are  to  qualify 
the  whole  of  things,  and  if  they  are  to  apply  to  ulti- 
mate reality,  then  the  main  conclusions  of  this  work 
are  naturally  erroneous.  But  I  cannot  adopt  others 
until  at  least  I  see  an  attempt  made  to  set  them  out 
in  a  rational  form.  And  1  can  not  profess  respect 
for  views  which  seem  to  me  in  many  cases  insincere. 
If  progress  is  to  be  more  than  relative,  and  is  some- 
thing beyond  a  mere  partial  phenomenon,  then  the 
religion,  professed  most  commonly  among  us,  has 
been  abandoned.  You  cannot  be  a  Christian  if  you 
maintain  that  progress  is  final  and  ultimate  and  the 
last  truth  about  things.  And  I  urge  this  considera- 
tion, of  course  not  as  an  argument  from  my  mouth, 
but  as  a  way  of  bringing  home  perhaps  to  some 
persons  their  inconsistency.  Make  the  moral  point 
of  view  absolute,  and  then  realize  your  position. 
^  This  image  is,  I  believe,  borrowed  from  Strauss. 


J 


Tllli    ABSOLUTE   AND    ITS    APPEARANCES. 


501 


You  have  become  not  merely  irrational,  but  you 
have  also,  I  presume,  broken  with  every  consider- 
able religion.  And  you  have  been  brought  to  this 
by  following  the  merest  prejudice. 

Philosophy,  I  agree,  has  to  justify  the  various 
sides  of  our  life  ;  but  this  is  impossible,  I  would 
urge,  if  any  side  is  made  absohite.  Our  attitudes  in 
life  give  place  ceaselessly  the  one  to  the  other,  and 
hfe  is  satisfied  if  each  in  its  own  field  is  allowed 
supremacy.  Now  to  deny  progress  of  the  universe 
surely  leaves  morality  where  it  was.  A  man  has 
his  self  or  his  world,  about  to  make  an  advance  (he 
may  hope)  through  his  personal  effort,  or  in  any 
case  (he  knows  well)  to  be  made  the  best  of.  The 
universe  is,  so  far,  worse  through  his  failure ;  it  is 
better,  so  far,  through  his  success.  And  if,  not  con- 
tent with  this,  he  demands  to  alter  the  universe  at 
large,  he  should  at  least  invoke  neither  reason  nor 
religion  nor  morality.  For  the  improvement  or 
decay  of  the  universe  seems  nonsense,  unmeaning 
or  blasphemous.  While,  on  the  other  hand,  faith  in 
the  progress  or  persistence  of  those  who  inhabit 
our  planet  has  nothing  to  do  with  metaphysics. 
And  I  may  perhaps  add  that  it  has  little  more  to  do 
with  morality.  Such  faith  can  not  alter  our  duties  ; 
and  to  the  mood,  in  which  we  approach  them,  the 
difference,  which  it  makes,  may  not  be  wholly  an 
advantage.  If  we  can  be  weakened  by  despondence, 
we  can,  no  less,  be  hurried  away  by  stupid  en- 
thusiasm and  by  pernicious  cant  But  this  is  no 
place  for  the  discussion  of  such  matters,  and  we  may 
be  content  here  to  know  that  we  cannot  attribute 
any  progress  to  the  Absolute. 

I  will  end  this  chapter  with  a  few  remarks  on  a 
subject  which  lies  near.  1  refer  to  that  which  is 
commonly  called  the  Immortality  of  the  Soul.  This 
is  a  topic  on  which  for  several  reasons  I  would 
rather  keep  silence,  but    I   think  that  silence  here 


502 


REALITY. 


might  fairly  be  misunderstood.  It  is  not  easy, 
the  first  place,  to  say  exactly  what  a  future  life 
means.  The  period  of  personal  continuance  ob- 
viously need  not  be  taken  as  endless.  And  again 
precisely  in  what  sense,  and  how  far,  the  survival 
must  be  personal  is  not  easy  to  lay  down.  I  shall 
assume  here  that  what  is  meant  is  an  existence  after 
death  which  is  conscious  of  its  identity  with  our  life 
here  and  now.  And  the  duration  of  this  must  be 
taken  as  suflficient  to  remove  any  idea  of  unwilling 
extinction  or  of  premature  decease.  Now  we  seem 
to  desire  continuance  (if  we  do  desire  it)  for  a 
variety  of  reasons,  and  it  might  be  interesting  else- 
where to  set  these  out  and  to  clear  away  confusions.* 
I  must  however  pass  at  once  to  the  question  of 
possibility. 

There  is  one  sense  in  which  the  immortality  of 
souls  seems  impossible.  We  must  remember  that 
the  universe  is  incapable  of  increase.  And  to  sup- 
pose a  constant  supply  of  new  souls,  none  of  which 
ever  perished,  would  clearly  land  us  in  the  end  in 
I  an  insoluble  difliculty.  But  it  is  quite  unnecessary,  I 
presume,  to  hold  tlie  doctrine  in  this  sense.  And, 
if  we  take  the  question  generally,  then,  to  deny  the 
possibility  of  a  life  after  death  would  be  quite 
ridiculous.  There  is  no  way  of  proving,  first,  that  a 
body  is  required  for  a  soul  (Chapter  xxiii.).  And 
though  a  soul,  when  bodiless,  might  (for  all  we 
know)  be  even  more  subject  to  mortality,  yet  ob- 
viously here  we  have  passed  into  a  region  of  ignor- 
ance.    And   to  say  that  in  this   region  a  personal 

'  The  so-called  fear  of  extinction  seems  to  rest  on  a  confusion, 
and  I  do  not  believe  that,  in  a  proper  form,  it  exists  at  all.  It  is 
really  mere  shrinking  from  defeat  and  from  injury  and  pain.  For 
we  on  think  of  our  own  total  surcease,  but  we  cannot  imagine  it. 
Against  our  will,  and  perhaps  unconsciously,  there  creeps  in  the 
idea  of  a  reluctant  an<i  struggling  self',  or  of  a  self  disappointed, 
or  wearied,  or  in  some  way  discontented.  And  this  is  certainly 
not  a  self  completely  extinguished.  There  is  no  fear  of  death  at 
all,  we  may  say,  except  either  incidentally  or  through  an  illusion. 


THE   ABSOLUTE   AND   ITS   APPEARANCES. 


503 


continuance  could  not  be,  appears  simply  irrational. 
And  the  same  result  holds,  even  if  we  take  a  body 
as  essential  to  every  soul,  and,  even  if  we  insist  also 
(as  we  cannot)  that  this  body  must  be  made  of  our 
everyday  substance,  A  future  life  is  possible  even 
on  the  ground  of  common  crude  Materialism.'  After 
an  interval,  no  matter  how  lontj,  another  nervous 
system  sufficiently  like  our  own  might  be  developed  ; 
and  in  this  case  memory  and  a  personal  identity 
must  arise.  The  event  may  be  as  improbable  as 
you  please,  but  I  at  least  can  find  no  reason  for 
calling  it  impossible.  And  we  may  even  go  a  step 
further  still.  It  is  conceivable  that  an  indefinite 
number  of  such  bodies  should  exist,  not  in  succes- 
sion merely,  but  all  together  and  all  at  once.  But, 
if  so.  we  might  gain  a  personal  continuance  not 
single  but  multiform,  and  might  secure  a  destiny  on 
which  it  would  be  idle  to  enlarge.  In  ways  like  the 
above  it  is  clear  that  a  future  life  is  possible,  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  such  possibilities  are  not  worth 
much. 

A  thing  is  impossible  absolutely  when  it  contra- 
dicts the  known  nature  of  Reality.*  It  is  impossible 
relatively  when  it  collides  with  some  idea  which  we 
have  found  good  cause  to  take  as  real.  A  thing  is 
possible,  first,  as  long  as  it  is  not  quite  meaningless. 
It  must  contain  some  positive  quality  belonging  to 
the  universe ;  and  it  must  not  at  the  same  lime 
remove  tiiis  and  itself  by  some  destructive  addition. 
A  thing  is  possible  further,  according  as  its  mean- 
ing contains  without  discrepancy  more  and  more  of 
what  is  held  to  be  real.  We,  in  other  words,  con- 
sider anything  more  possible  as  it  grows  in  proba- 

'  I  have  attempted  to  show  this  in  an  article  on  the  Evidences 
of  Spiritualism,  Fortnightly  Rej'iew,  December,  1885.  It  may 
perhaps  be  worth  while  to  add  here  that  apparently  even  a  high 
organism  is  possible,  which  apart  from  accidents  would  never  die. 
Apparently  this  could  not  be  termed  impossible  in  principle,  at 
least  within  our  present  knowledge. 

*  See,  above,  Chapter  xxiv.,  and,  below,  Chapter  xxvii. 


504 


«EALITY. 


bility.  And  "  Probability,"  we  are  rightly  told,  "  is 
the  guide  of  life."  We  want  to  know,  in  short,  not 
whether  a  thing  is  merely  and  barely  possible,  but 
how  much  ground  we  have  for  expecting  it  and  not 
something  else. 

In  a  case  like  the  present,  we  cannot,  of  course, 
hope  to  set  out  the  chances,  for  we  have  to  do  with 
elements  the  value  of  which  is  not  known.  And 
for  probability  the  unknown  is  of  different  kinds. 
There  is  first  the  unknown  utterly,  which  is  not 
possible  at  all ;  and  this  is  discounted  and  treated  as 
nothing.  There  is  next  something  possible,  the  full 
nature  of  which  is  hidden,  but  the  extent  and  value 
of  which,  as  against  some  other  "  events,"  is  clear. 
And  so  far  all  is  straij^htforward.  But  we  have 
still  to  deal  with  the  unknown  in  two  more  trouble- 
some senses.  It  may  stand  for  a  mere  possibility 
about  which  we  know  nothing  further,  and  for 
entertaining  which  we  can  find  no  further  ground. 
Or  again,  the  unknown  may  cover  a  region,  where 
we  can  specify  no  details,  but  which  still  we  can 
judge  to  contain  a  great  diversity  of  possible 
events. 

We  shall  soon  find  the  importance  of  these  dry 
distinctions.  A  bodiless  soul  is  possible  because  it 
is  not  meaningless,  or  in  any  way  known  to  be  im- 
possible. But  I  fail  to  find  any  further  :md  addi- 
tional reason  in  its  favour.  And,  next,  would  a 
bodiless  soul  be  immortal  .''  And,  again,  why  after 
death  should  we,  in  particular,  have  any  bodiless 
continuance  .■*  The  original  slight  probability  of  a 
future  life  seems  not  much  increased  by  these  con- 
siderations. Again,  if  we  take  body  to  be  essential 
— a  body,  that  is,  consisting  of  matter  either  fami- 
liar or  strange  —  what,  on  this  ground,  is  our 
chance  of  personal  continuance  after  death  ?  You 
may  here  appeal  to  the  unknown,  and,  where  our 
knowledge  seems  nothing,  you  may  perhaps  urge, 
'  Why  not   this  event,  just  as  much  as  its  contrary 


THE    ABSOLUTE    AND    ITS    APPEARANCES. 


505 


and  opposite  ?  "  But  the  question  would  rest  on  a 
fallacy,  and  I  must  insist  on  the  distinction  which 
above  we  laid  down.  In  this  unknown  field  we  cer- 
tainly cannot  particularize  and  set  out  the  chances, 
but  in  another  sense  the  field  is  not  quite  unknown.' 
We  cannot  say  that,  of  the  combinations  possible 
there,  one  half  is,  for  all  we  know,  favourable  to  a 
life  after  death.  For,  to  judge  by  actual  experience, 
the  combinations  seem  mostly  unfavourable.  And, 
though  the  character  of  what  falls  outside  our  ex- 
perience tJtay  be  very  different,  yet  our  judgment  as 
to  this  must  be  affected  by  what  we  do  know.  But, 
if  so,  while  the  whole  variety  of  combinations  must 
be  taken  as  very  large,  the  portion  judged  favour- 
able to  continued  life,  whether  multiform  or  simple, 
must  be  set  down  as  small.  Such  will  have  to  be 
our  conclusion  if  we  deal  with  this  unknown  field. 
But,  if  we  may  not  deal  with  it,  the  possibility  of  a 
future  life  is,  on  this  ground,  cjuite  unknown  ;  and, 
if  so,  we  have  no  right  to  consider  it  at  all.  And 
the  general  result  to  my  mind  is  briefly  this.  When 
you  add  together  the  chances  of  a  life  after  death — • 
a  life  taken  as  bodiless,  and  again  as  diversely  em- 
bodied— the  amount  is  not  great.  The  balance  of 
hostile  probability  seems  so  large  that  the  fraction 
on  the  other  side  to  my  mind  is  not  considerable. 
And  we  may  repeat,  and  may  sum  up  our  conclu- 
sion thus.  If  we  appeal  to  blank  ignorance,  then  a 
future  life  may  even  have  no  meaning,  and  may  fail 
wholly  to  be  possible.  Or  if  we  avoid  this  worst 
extreme,  a  future   life  may  be   but  barely  possible. 


'  The  probability  of  an  unknown  event  is  rightly  taken  as  one 
half.  But,  in  apjilying  this  abstract  trutli,  we  must  be  on  our 
guard  against  error.  In  the  case  of  an  event  in  time  our  igno- 
rance can  hardly  be  entire.  We  know,  for  example,  that  at  each 
moment  Nature  produces  a  diversity  of  changed  events.  The 
abstract  chance  then,  say  of  the  repetition  of  a  certain  occur- 
rence in  a  certain  place,  must  be  therefore  much  less  than  one 
half.  On  the  other  side  again  cortsiderations  of  another  kind 
will  come  in,  and  may  raise  the  value  indefinitely. 


5o6 


REALITY. 


But  a  possibility,  in  this  sense,  stands  unsupported 
face  to  face  with  an  indefinite  universe.  And  its 
value,  so  far,  can  hardly  be  called  worth  counting. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  allow  ourselves  to  use 
what  knowledge  we  possess,  and  if  we  judge  fairly 
of  future  life  by  all  the  grounds  we  have  forjudg- 
ing, the  result  is  not  much  modified.  Among  those 
grounds  we  certainly  find  a  part  which  favours  con- 
tinuance ;  but,  taken  at  its  highest,  that  part  appears 
to  be  small.  Hence  a  future  life  must  be  taken  as 
decideJly  improbable. 

But  in  this  way,  it  will  be  objected,  the  question 
is  not  properly  dealt  with.  "  On  the  grounds  you 
have  stated,"  it  will  be  urged,  "  future  life  may  be 
improbable  ;  but  then  those  grounds  really  lie  out- 
side the  main  point.  The  positive  evidence  for  a 
future  life  is  what  weighs  with  our  minds  ;  and  this 
is  independ(;nt  of  discussions  as  to  what,  in  the  ab- 
stract, is  probable."  The  objection  is  fair,  and  my 
reply  to  it  is  plain  and  simple.  I  have  ignored  the 
positive  evidence  because  for  me  it  has  really  no 
value.  Direct  arguments  to  show  that  a  future  life 
is,  not  merely  possible,  but  real,  seem  to  me  unavail- 
ing. The  addition  to  general  probability,  which 
they  make,  is  to  my  mind  trifling;  and,  without 
examining  these  arguments  in  detail,  1  will  add  a 
few  remarks.' 

'  Tfie  argument  based  on  ajiparitions  and  necromancy  I  have 
discussed  in  the  article  ciled  above,  p.  503.  There,  on  the 
hypolhesis  that  e.xtra-human  inteUigences  had  been  proved,  I 
attempted  to  show  tliat  the  conchisions  of  Spiriiiialisin  were  still 
baseless.  1  had  no  space  there  to  urge  that  the  hypothesis  itself 
is  ridiculously  untrue.  The  sjiiiitualist  appears  to  think  that 
anything,  whiclr  is  not  in  the  usual  course  of  things,  goes  to  prove 
his  special  conclusion.  He  seems  not  to  perceive  any  difference 
between  the  possible  and  the  actual.  As  if  to  open  a  wide  field 
of  indefinite  possibilities  were  the  same  thing  as  the  exclusion  of 
all  others  but  one.  Against  the  spiritualist,  open  or  covert,  it  is 
most  important  to  insist  that  all  the  facts  shall  be  dealt  with, 
whether  in  man  alone  or,  perhaps  also,  in  the  lower  animals. 


THE  ABSOLUTE  AND  ITS  APPEARANCES. 


507 


Philosophy,  I  repeat,  has  to  justify  ail  sides  of 
our  nature  ;  and  this  means,  I  agree,  that  our  main 
cravings  must  find  satisfaction.  But  that  every  de- 
sire of  every  kind  must,  as  such,  be  gratified — this 
is  quite  a  different  demand,  and  it  is  surely  ir- 
rational. At  all  events  it  is  opposed  to  the  results 
of  our  preceding  discussions.  The  destiny  of  the, 
finite,  we  saw  everywhere,  is  to  reach  consumma* 
tion,  but  never  wholly  as  such,  never  quite  in  itB 
own  way.  And  as  to  this  desire  for  a  future  life, 
what  is  there  in  it  so  sacred  .''  How  can  its  attain- 
ment be  implied  in  the  very  principles  of  our 
nature  .''  Nay,  is  there  in  it,  taken  by  itself,  any- 
thing moral  in  the  least  or  religious  at  all.''  1  desire 
to  have  no  pain,  but  always  pleasure,  and  to  con- 
tinue so  indefinitely.  But  the  literal  fulfilment  of 
my  wish  is  incompatible  with  my  place  in  the  uni- 
verse. It  is  irreconcileable  with  my  own  nature, 
and  I  have  to  be  content  therefore  with  that  mea- 
sure of  satisfaction  which  my  nature  permits.  And 
am  I,  on  this  account,  to  proclaim  philosophy  insol- 
vent, because  it  will  not  listen  to  demands  really 
based  on  nothing  ? 

But  the  demand  for  future  life,  I  shall  be  told,  is 
a  genuine  postulate,  and  its  satisfaction  is  implicated 
in  the  very  essence  of  our  nature.  Now,  if  this 
means  that  our  religion  and  our  morality  will  not 
work  without  it — so  much  the  worse,  I  reply,  for 
our  morality  and  our  religion.  The  remedy  lies  in 
the  correction  of  our  mistaken  and  immoral  notions 


The  unbroken  continuity  of  the  phenomena  is  fatal  to  Spiritual- 
ism. The  more  that  abnormal  human  perception  and  action  is 
verified,  the  more  hopeless  it  becomes  to  get  to  non-human 
beings.  The  more  fully  the  monstrous  resuhs  uf->u«dt^n  seances 
are  accepted,  the  more  impossible  it  l)ecomes,  in  such^a  far- 
seeing  and  such  a  silly  world  of  demons,  to  find  any  sort  of  test 
for  S|>irit-Identity.  As  to  facts  my  mind  is,  and  always  lias  been, 
perfectly  open.  It  is  the  irrational  conclusions  of  the  spiritualist 
that  1  reject  with  disgust.  They  strike  me  as  the  expression  of, 
and  the  excuse  for,  a  discreditable  sujierstition. 


5o8 


REALITY. 


about  goodness.  "  But  then,"  it  will  be  exc1alm«!, 
"  this  is  too  horrible.  There  really  after  all  will  be 
self-sacrifice ;  and  virtue  and  selfishness  after  all  will 
not  be  identical."  But  I  have  already  explained,  in' 
Chapter  xxv.,  why  this  moving  appeal  finds  me  deaf. 
"  But  then  strict  justice  is  not  paramount."  No,  1 
am  sure  that  it  is  not  so.  There  is  a  great  deal  in 
the  universe,  I  am  sure,  beyond  mere  morality  ;  and 
I  have  yet  to  learn  that,  even  in  the  moral  world, 
the  highest  law  is  justice.     "  But,  if  we  die,  think  of 

I  the  loss  of  all  our  hard- won  gains."  But  is  a  thingr 
lost,  in  the  first  place,  because  /  fail  to  get  it  or  re- 
tain it  ?  And,  in  the  second  j)lace,  what  seems  to 
us  sheer  waste  is,  to  a  very  large  extent,  the  way  of 
the  universe.  We  need  not  take  on  ourselves  to 
be  anxious  about  that.  "  But  without  endless  pro- 
gress, how  reach  perfection  ?  "  And  u<ilh  endless 
progress  (if  that  means  anything)  I  answer,  how; 
reach  it  ?  Surely  perfection  and  finitude  are  in 
principle  not  compatible.  If  you  are  to  be  perfect, 
then  you,  as  such,  must  be  resolved  and  cease  ;  and'. 
endless  progress  sounds  merely  like  an  attempt  in- 
definitely to  put  off  perfection.'  And  as  a  function 
of  the  perfect  universe,  on  the  other  hand,  you  are 
perfect  already.  "  But  after  all  we  must  wish  that 
pain  and  sorrow  should  be  somewhere  made  good." 
On  the  whole,  and  in  the  whole,  if  our  view  is  right, 
this  is  fully  the  case.  With  the  individual  often  I 
agree  it  is  not  the  case.  And  I  wish  it  otherwise, 
•meaning  by  this  that  my  inclination  and  duty  as  a 
fellow- creature  impels  me  that  way,  and  that  wishes 
and  actions  of  this  sort  among  finite  beings  fulfil  the 
plan  of  the  Whole.  But  I  cannot  argue,  therefore, 
that  all  is  wrong  if  individuals  suffer.  There  is 
in  life  always,  I  admit,  a  note  of  sadness  ;  but  it 
ought  not  to  prevail,  nor  can  we  truly  assert  that  it 
does  so.     And  the  universe  in  its  attitude  towards 

'  The  reader,  who  desires  to  follow  out  this  point,  must   be 
referred  to  Hegel's  Phiinomenologie,  449-460. 


THE    ABSOLUTE    AND    ITS   AI'PEARANCES. 


509 


finite  beings  must  be  judged  of  not  piecemeal  but 
as  a  system.  "  But,  if  hopes  and  fears  are  taken 
away,  we  shall  be  less  happy  and  less  moral."  Per- 
haps, and  perhaps  again  both  more  moral  and  more 
happy.  The  question  is  a  large  one,  and  I  do  not 
intend  to  discuss  it,  but  I  will  say  so  much  as  this. 
Whoever  argues  that  belief  in  a  future  life  has,  on 
the  whole,  brought  evil  to  liunianity,  has  at  least  a 
strong  case.  But,  the  question  here  seems  irrele- 
vant. If  it  could  indeed  be  urged  that  the  essence 
of  a  finite  being  is  such,  that  it  can  only  regulate 
its  conduct  by  keeping  sight  of  another  world  and 
of  another  life — the  matter,  I  agree,  would  be 
altered.  But  if  it  comes  merely  to  this,  that  human 
beings  now  are  in  such  a  condition  that,  if  they  do 
not  believe  what  is  probably  untrue,  they  must  de- 
teriorate—that to  the  universe,  if  it  were  the  case, 
would  be  a  mere  detail.  It  is  the  rule  that  a  race 
of  beings  so  out  of  agreement  with  their  environ- 
ment should  deteriorate,  and  it  is  well  for  them  to 
make  way  for  another  race  constituted  more  ration- 
ally and  happily.      And  I  must  leave  the  matter  so.' 

^  I  have  said  nothing  about  the  argument  based  on  our  desire 
to  meet  once  more  tliose  whom  we  have  loved.  No  one  can 
have  been  so  fortunate  as  never  to  have  felt  the  grief  of  parting, 
or  so  inhuman  as  not  to  have  longed  for  another  meeting  after 
death.  But  no  one,  1  think,  can  have  reached  a  certain  time 
of  life,  without  finding,  more  or  less,  that  such  desires  are  in- 
consistent with  themselves.  There  are  partings  made  by 
death,  and,  perhaps,  worse  partings  made  by  life ;  and  there 
are  partings  which  both  life  and  doath  unite  in  veiling  from  our 
eyes.  And  friends  that  have  buried  their  quarrel  in  a  woman's 
grave,  would  ihey  at  the  Resurrection  be  friends  ?  But,  in  any 
case,  the  desire  can  hardly  pass  as  a  serious  argument.  The 
revolt  of  modern  Christianity  .igainst  the  austere  sentence  of  the 
Gospel  (Matt.  xxii.  30)  is  interesting  enough.  One  feels  that  a 
personal  immortality  would  not  be  very  personal,  if  it  im|)lied 
mutilation  of  our  affections.  There  are  those  too  who  would 
not  sit  down  among  the  angels,  till  they  had  recovered  their  dog. 
Still  this  general  appeal  to  the  atTections — the  only  appeal  as  to 
future  life  which  to  nie  individually  is  not  hollow — can  hardly  be 
turned  into  a  proof. 


5IO  REALITY. 

All  the  above  arguments,  and  there  are  others, 
rest  on  assumptions  negatived  by  the  general 
results  of  this  volume.  It  is  about  the  truth  of 
these  assumptions,  I  would  add,  that  discussion  is 
desirable  It  is  idle  to  repeat,  "  I  want  something," 
unless  you  can  show  that  the  nature  of  things  de- 
mands it  also.  And  to  debate  this  special  question, 
apart  from  an  enquiry  into  the  ultimate  nature  of 
the  world,  is  surely  unprofitable. 

Future  life  is  a  subject  on  which  I  had  no  desire 
to  speak.  I  have  kept  silence  until  the  subject 
seemed  forced  before  me,  and  until  in  a  manner  I 
had  dealt  with  the  main  problems  involved  in  it. 
The  conclusion  arrived  at  seems  the  result  to  which 
the  educated  world,  on  the  whole,  is  making  its 
way.  A  personal  continuance  is  possible,  and  it  is 
but  little  more.  Still,  if  any  one  can  believe  in  it, 
and  finds  himself  sustained  by  that  belief, — after 
all  it  is  possible.  On  the  other  hand  it  is  better  to 
be  quit  of  both  hope  and  fear,  than  to  lapse  back 
into  any  form  of  degrading  superstition.  And 
surely  there  are  few  greater  responsibilities  which  a 
man  can  take  on  himself,  than  to  have  proclaimed, 
or  even  hinted,  that  without  immortality  all  religion 
is  a  cheat  and  all  morality  a  self-deceptioa 


CHAPTER    XXVII. 


ULTIMATE  DOUBTS. 


It  is  time,  however  prematurely,  to  brings  this  work 
to  an  end.  We  may  conclude  it  by  asking  how  far, 
and  in  what  sense,  we  are  at  liberty  to  treat  its  main 
results  as  certain.  We  have  found  that  Reality  is 
one,  that  it  essentially  is  experience,  and  that  it 
owns  a  balance  of  pleasure.  There  is  nothing  in 
the  Whole  beside  appearance,  and  every  fragment  of 
appearance  qualifies  the  Whole  ;  while  on  the  other 
hand,  so  taken  together,  appearances,  as  such,  cease. 
Nothing  in  the  universe  can  be  lost,  nothing  fails  to 
contribute  to  the  single  Reality,  but  every  finite 
diversity  is  also  supplemented  and  transformed. 
Everything  in  the  Absolute  still  is  that  which  it  is 
for  itself.  Its  private  character  remains,  and  is  but 
neutralized  by  comj)lement  and  addition.  And 
hence,  because  nothing  in  the  end  can  be  jncrely 
itself,  in  the  end  no  appearance,  as  such,  can  be  real. 
But  appearances  fail  of  reality  in  varying  degrees  ; 
and  to  assert  that  one  on  the  whole  is  worth  no 
more  than  another,  is  fundamentally  vicious. 

The  fact  of  appearance,  and  of  the  diversity  of  its 
particular  spheres,  we  found  was  inexplicable.  Why 
there  are  appearances,  and  why  appearances  of  such 
various  kinds,  are  questions  not  to  be  answered. 
But  in  all  this  diversity  of  existence  we  saw  nothing 
opposed  to  a  complete  harmony  and  system  in  the 
Whole.  The  nature  of  that  system  in  detail  lies 
beyond  our  knowledge,  but  we  could  discover  no- 
where the  sign  of  a  recalcitrant  element.     We  could 


5'2 


REALITY. 


perceive  nothing  on  which  any  objection  to  our 
view  of  Reality  could  rationally  be  founded.  And 
so  we  ventured  to  conclude  that  Reality  possesses — 
how  we  do  not  know — the  general  nature  we  have 
assigned  to  it. 

"  But,  after  all,  your  conclusion,"  I  may  be  told, 
"  is  not  proved.  Suppose  that  we  can  find  no 
objection  sufficient  to  overthrow  it,  yet  such  an 
absence  of  disproof  does  not  render  it  certain. 
Your  result  may  be  possible,  but,  with  that,  it  has 
not  become  real.  For  why  should  Reality  be  not 
just  as  well  something  else  ."*  How  in  the  unknown 
world  of  possibilities  can  we  be  restricted  to  this 
one  .'' "  The  objection  seems  serious,  and,  in  order 
to  consider  it  properly,  I  must  be  allowed  first  to 
enter  on  some  abstract  considerations.  I  will  try  to 
confine  them  to  what  is  essential  here. 

I.  In  theory  you  cannot  indulge  with  consistency 
in  an  ultimate  doubt.  You  are  forced,  willingly  or 
not,  at  a  certain  point  to  assume  infallibility.  For, 
otherwise,  how  could  you  proceed  to  judge  at  all  ? 
The  intellect,  if  you  please,  is  but  a  miserable  frag- 
ment of  our  nature  ;  but  in  the  intellectual  world  it, 
none  the  less,  must  remain  supreme.  And,  if  it 
attempts  to  abdicate,  then  its  world  is  forthwith 
broken  up.  Hence  we  must  answer,  Outside  theory 
take  whatever  attitude  you  may  prefer,  only  do  not 
sit  down  to  a  game  unless  you  are  prepared  to  play. 
But  every  pursuit  obviously  must  involve  some  kind 
of  governing  principle.  Even  the  extreme  of  theor- 
etical scepticism  is  based  on  some  accepted  idea 
about  truth  and  fact.  It  is  because  you  are  sure  as 
to  some  main  feature  of  truth  or  reality,  that  you 
are  compelled  to  doubt  or  to  reject  special  truths 
which  are  oftered  you.  But,  if  so,  you  stand  on  an 
absolute  principle,  and,  with  regard  to  this,  you 
claim,  tacitly  or  openly,  to  be  infallible.  And  to 
start  from  our  general  fallil)ility,  and  to  argue  from 


ULTIMATE    DOUUTS. 


5IJ 


1 

P 


this  to  the  uncertainty  of  every  possible  result,  is  in 
the  end  irrational.  For  the  assertion,  "  I  am  sure 
that  I  am  everywhere  fallible,"  contradicts  itself,  and 
would  revive  a  familiar  Greek  dilemma.  And  if  we 
modify  the  assertion,  and  instead  of  "everywhere" 
write  "  in  general,"  then  the  desired  conclusion  will 
not  follow.  For  unless,  once  more  falsely,  we 
assume  that  all  truths  are  much  the  same,  and  that 
with  regard  to  every  point  error  is  equally  probable, 
fallibility  in  general  need  not  affect  a  particular 
result.'  In  short  within  theory  we  must  decline  to 
consider  the  chance  of  a  fundamental  error.  Our 
assertion  of  fallibility  may  serve  as  the  expression 
of  modest  feeling,  or  again  of  the  low  estimate  we 
may  have  formed  of  the  intellect's  value.  But  such 
an  estimate  or  such  a  feeling  must  remain  outside  of 
the  actual  process  of  theory.  For,  admitted  within, 
they  would  at  once  be  inconsistent  and  irrational. 

2.  An  asserted  possibility  in  the  next  place  must 
have  some  meaning.  A  bare  word  is  not  a  possi- 
bility, nor  does  any  one  ever  knowingly  offer  it  as 
such.  A  possibility  always  must  present  us  with 
some  actual  idea. 

3.  And  this  idea  must  not  contradict  itself,  and  so 
be  self-destructive.  So  far  as  it  is  seen  to  be  so,  to 
that  extent  it  must  not  be  taken  as  possible.  For  a 
possibility  qualifies  the  Real,*  and  must  therefore 
not  conflict  with  the  known  character  of  its  subject 
And  it  is  useless  to  object  here  that  all  appearance 
is  self-contradictory.  That  is  true,  but,  as  self- 
contradictory  and  so  far  as  it  is  so,  appearance  is 
not  a  real  or  possible  predicate  of  Reality.  A 
predicate  which  contradicts  itself  is,  as  such,  not 
possibly  real.  In  order  to  be  real,  its  particular 
nature  must  be  modified  and  corrected.     And  this 


'  On  this  point  compare  my  Principles  oj  Logic,  pp.  519-20. 

*  Jbid.  p.  187.  The  reader  should  compare  the  treatment  of 
Possibility  above  in  this  volume  (Chapter  xxiv.),  and  again  in  Mr. 
Bosanquet's  Logic. 

A.  R.  LL 


REALITY. 


process  of  correction,  and  of  making  good,  may  in 
addition  totally  transform  and  entirely  dissipate  its 
nature  (Chapter  xxiv.). 

4.  It  is  impossible  rationally  to  doubt  where  you 
have  but  one  idea.  You  may  doubt  psychically, 
given  two  ideas  which  seem  two  but  are  one.  And, 
even  without  this  actual  illusion,  you  may  feel  un- 
easy in  mind  and  may  hesitate.  But  doubt  implies 
two  ideas,  which  in  their  meaning  and  truly  are 
two ;  and,  without  these  ideas,  doubt  has  no  rational 
existence.' 

5.  Where  you  have  an  idea  and  cannot  doubt, 
there  logically  you  must  assert.  For  everything 
(we  have  seen  throughout)  must  qualify  the  Real. 
And  if  an  idea  does  not  contradict  itself,  cither  as  it 
is  or  as  taken  with  other  things  (Chapter  xvi.),  it  is 
at  once  true  and  real.  Now  clearly  a  sole  possi- 
bility cannot  so  contradict  itself;'"  and  it  must  there- 
fore be  affirmed.  Psychical  failure  and  confusion 
may  here  of  course  stand  in  the  way.  But  such 
confusion  and  failure  can  in  theory  count  for 
nothing. 

6.  "  But  to  reason  thus,"  it  may  be  objected,  "  is 
to  rest  knowledge  on  ignorance.  It  is  surely  the 
grounding  of  an  assertion  on  our  bare  impotence." 
No  objection  could  be  more  mistaken,  since  the 
very  essence  of  our  principle  consists  in  the  diame- 
trical opposite.  Its  essence  lies  in  the  refusal  to  set 
blank  ignorance  in  the  room  of  knowledge.  He 
who  wishes  to  doubt,  when  he  has  not  before  him 
two  genuine  ideas,  he  who  talks  of  a  possible,  which 
is  not  based  on  actual  knowledge  about  Reality — it 
is  he  who  takes  his  stand  upon  sheer  incapacity. 
He  is  the  man  who,  admitting  his  emptiness,  then 
pretends  to  bring  forth  truth.  And  it  is  against 
this  monstrous  pretence,  this  mad  presumption    in 

>  Ibid.  p.  s>7- 

*  For,  if  it  did,  it  would  split  internally,  as  well  as  pass  beyond 
itself  exernally. 


ULTIMATE    DOUBTS. 

the  guise  of  modesty,  that  our  principle  protests. 
But.  if  we  seriously  consider  the  matter,  our  conclu- 
sion grows  plain.  Surely  an  idea  must  have  a 
meaning ;  surely  two  ideas  are  required  for  any 
rational  doubt ;  surely  to  be  called  possible  is  to  be 
affirmed  to  some  extent  of  the  Real.  And  surely, 
where  you  have  no  alternative,  it  is  not  right  or 
rational  to  take  the  attitude  of  a  man  who  hesitates 
between  diverse  courses. 

7.  1  will  consider  next  an  argument  for  general 
doubt  which  might  be  drawn  from  reflection  on  the 
privative  judgment.'  In  such  a  judgment  the  Reality 
excludes  some  suggestion,  but  the  basis  of  the  re- 
jection is  not  a  positive  quality  in  the  known  subject. 
The  basis  on  the  contrary  is  an  absence;  and  a 
mere  absence  implies  the  qualification  of  the  subject 
by  its  psychical  setting  in  us.  Or  we  may  say 
that,  while  the  known  subject  is  assumed  to  be  com- 
plete, its  limitations  fall  outside  itself  and  lie  in  our 
incapacity.  And  it  may  be  urged  here  that  with 
Reality  this  is  always  the  case.  The  universe,  as 
we  know  it,  in  other  words  is  complete  only  through 
our  ignorance  ;  and  hence  it  may  be  said  for  our 
real  knowledge  to  be  incomplete  always.  And  on 
this  ground,  it  may  be  added,  we  can  decline  to 
assert  of  the  universe  any  one  possibility,  even  when 
we  are  able  to  find  no  other. 

I  have  myself  raised  this  objection  because  it 
contains  an  important  truth.  And  its  principle,  if 
confined  to  proper  limits,  is  entirely  sound.  Nay, 
throughout  this  work,  I  have  freely  used  the  right  to 
postulate  everywhere  an  unknown  supplementation 
of  knowledge.  And  how  then  here,  it  may  be 
urged,  are  we  to  throw  over  this  principle  .''  Why 
should  not  Reality  be  considered  always  as  limited 
by  our  impotence,  and  as  extending,  therefore,  in 
every  respect  beyond  the  area  of  our  possibilities  } 


'  Iliid,  pp.  112-115,  S""5'7-     •'^"•^  **^>  above,  Chapter  xxiv. 


5'6 


REALIIY, 


But  the  objection  at  this  point,  it  is  clear,  contra- 
dicts 1 1  self.  Ihe  area  of  what  is  possible  is  here 
extended  and  limited  in  a  breath,  and  a  ruinous 
dilemma  might  be  set  up  and  urged  in  reply  to  the 
question.  But  it  is  belter  at  once  to  expose  the 
main  underlying  error.  The  knowledge  of  priva- 
tion, like  all  other  knowledge,  in  the  end  is  positive. 
You  cannot  speak  of  the  absent  and  lacking  unless 
you  assume  some  field  and  some  presence  elsewhere. 
You  cannot  suggest  your  ignorance  as  a  reason  for 
judging  knowledge  incomplete,  unless  you  have 
some  knowledge  already  of  an  area  which  that 
ignorance  hides.  Within  the  known  extent  of  the 
Real  you  have  various  provinces,  and  hence  what 
is  absent  from  one  may  be  sought  for  in  another. 
And  where  in  certain  features  the  known  world 
suggests  itself  as  incomplete,  that  world  has  ex- 
tended itself  already  beyond  these  features.  Here 
then,  naturally,  we  have  a  right  to  follow  its  ex- 
tended reality  with  our  conclusions  and  surmises  ; 
and  in  these  discussions  we  have  availed  ourselves 
largely  of  that  privilege.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
this  holds  only  of  subordinate  matters,  and  our  right 
exists  only  while  we  remain  within  the  known  area 
of  the  universe.  It  is  senseless  to  attempt  to  go 
beyond,  and  to  assume  fields  that  lie  outside  the 
ultimate  nature  of  Reality.  If  there  were  any 
Reality  quite  beyond  our  knowledge,  we  could  in 
no  sense  be  aware  of  it  ;  and,  if  we  were  quite 
ignorant  of  it,  we  could  hardly  suggest  that  our 
ignorance  conceals  it.  And  thus,  in  the  end,  what 
we  know  and  what  is  real  must  be  co-extensive,  and 
assuredly  outside  of  this  area  nothing  is  possible. 
A  single  possibility  here  must,  therefore,  be  taken 
as  single  and  as  real.  Within  this  known  region, 
and  not  outside,  lies  all  the  kingdom  hidden  by 
ignorance  ;  and  here  is  the  object  of  all  intelligent 
doubt,  and  every  possibility  that  is  not  irrational. 

8.  With  a  view  to  gain  clearness  on  this  ppint,  it 


ULTIMATE    DOUBTS, 


517 


may  repay  us  to  consider  an  ideal  state  of  things. 
If  the  known  universe  were  a  perfect  system,  then 
it  could  nowhere  suggest  its  own  incompleteness. 
Every  possible  suggestion  would  then  at  once  take 
its  place  in  the  whole,  a  place  fore-ordained  and 
assigned  to  it  by  the  remaining  members  of  the 
system.  And  again,  starting  from  any  one  element 
in  such  a  whole,  we  could  from  that  proce';d  to 
work  out  completely  the  total  universe.  And  a 
doubt  drawn  from  privation  and  based  upon  ignor- 
ance would  here  entirely  disappear.  Not  only 
would  the  S3'stem  itself  have  no  other  possibility 
outside,  but  even  within  its  finite  details  the  same 
consummation  would  be  reached.  The  words  "  ab- 
sence "  and  "failure  "  would  here,  in  fact,  have  lost 
their  proper  sense.  Since  with  every  idea  its  full 
relations  to  all  else  would  be  visible,  there  would 
remain  no  region  of  doubt  or  of  possibility  or 
ignorance. 

9.  This  intellectual  ideal,  we  know,  is  not  actual 
fact.  It  does  not  exist  in  our  world,  and,  unless 
that  world  were  changed  radically,  its  existence  is 
not  possible.  It  would  require  an  alteration  of  the 
position  in  which  the  intellect  stands,  and  a  trans- 
formation of  its  whole  connection  with  the  remaining 
aspects  of  experience.  We  need  not  to  cast  about  for 
arguments  to  disprove  our  omniscience,  for  at  every 
turn  through  these  pages  our  weakness  has  been 
confessed.  The  universe  in  its  diversity  has  been 
seen  to  be  inexplicable,  and  I  will  not  repeat  here  the 
statement  made  in  the  preceding  Chapter  (p.  469). 
Our  system  throughout  its  detail  is  incomplete. 

Now  in  an  incomplete  system  there  must  be 
everywhere  a  region  of  ignorance.  Since  in  the 
end  subject  and  predicate  will  not  coincide,  there 
remains  a  margin  of  that  which,  except  more  or 
less  and  in  its  outline,  is  unknown.  And  here  is  a 
field  for  doubt  and  for  possibility  and  for  theoretical 
supplement.     An  incomplete  system  in   every  part 


ii8 


REALITY. 


is  inconsistent,  and  so  suggests  sometiiing  beyond. 
But  it  can  nowhere  sui^gest  the  precise  complement 
which  would  make  good  each  detail.  And  hence, 
both  in  its  extent  and  in  its  unity,  it  for  some 
part  must  remain  a  mere  collection.  We  may  say 
that,  in  the  end.  it  is  comprised  and  exhausted  only 
through  our  incompleteness. 

lo.  But  here  we  must  recur  to  the  distinction 
which  we  laid  down  above.  Even  in  an  incomplete 
world,  such  as  the  world  which  appears  in  our 
knowledge,  incompleteness  and  ignorance  after  all 
are  partial.  They  do  not  hold  yood  with  every 
feature,  but  there  are  points  where  no  legitimate 
idea  of  an  Other  exists.  And  in  these  points  a 
doubt,  and  an  enquiry  into  other  possibles,  would 
be  senseless  ;  for  there  is  no  available  area  in  which 
possibly  our  ignorance  could  fail.  And  clearly 
within  these  limits  (which  we  cannot  fi.x  before- 
hand) rational  doubt  becomes  irrational  assumption. 
Outside  these,  again,  there  may  be  suggestions, 
which  we  cannot  say  arc  meaningless  or  inconsis- 
tent with  the  nature  of  things;  and  yet  the  bare 
possibility  of  these  may  not  be  worth  considering. 
But,  once  more,  in  other  regions  of  the  world  the 
case  will  be  altered.  We  shall  find  a  greater  or  less 
degree  of  actual  completeness,  and.  with  this,  a 
series  of  possibilities  differing  in  value.  I  do  not 
think  that  with  advantage  we  could  pursue  further 
these  preliminary  discussions ;  and  we  must  now 
address  ourselves  directly  to  the  doubts  which  can 
be  raised  about  our  Absolute. 


With  regard  to  the  main  character  of  that  Abso- 
lute our  position  is  briefly  this.  We  hold  that  our 
conclusion  is  certain,  and  that  to  doubt  it  logically 
is  impossible.  There  is  no  other  view,  there  is  no 
other  idea  beyond  the  view  here  put  forward.  It  is 
impossible  rationally  even  to  entertain  the  question 
of   another   possibility.       Outside   our   main    result 


ULTIMATE    DOUBTS, 


519 


there  is  nothing  except  the  wholly  unmeaning^,  or 
else  sometliing  which  on  scrutiny  is  seen  really  not 
to  fall  outside.  Thus  the  supposed  Other  will,  in 
short,  turn  out  to  be  actually  the  same  ;  or  it  will 
contain  elements  included  within  our  view  of  the 
Absolute,  but  elements  dislocated  and  so  distorted 
into  erroneous  appearance.  And  the  dislocation 
itself  will  find  a  place  within  the  limits  of  our 
system. 

Our  result,  in  brief,  cannot  be  doubted,  since  it 
contains  all  possibilities.  Show  us  an  idea,  we  can 
proclaim,  which  seems  hostile  to  our  scheme,  and 
we  will  show  you  an  element  which  really  is  con- 
tained within  it.  And  we  will  demonstrate  your 
idea  to  be  a  self- contradictory  piece  of  our  system, 
an  internal  fragment  which  only  through  sheer 
blindness  can  fancy  itself  outside.  We  will  prove 
that  its  independence  and  isolation  are  nothing  in 
the  world  but  a  failure  to  perceive  more  than  one 
aspect  of  its  own  nature. 

And  the  shocked  appeal  to  our  modesty  and  our 
weakness  will  not  trouble  us.  It  is  on  this  very 
weakness  that,  in  a  sense,  we  have  taken  our  stand. 
We  are  impotent  to  divide  the  universe  into  the 
universe  and  something  outside.  We  are  incapable 
of  finding  another  field  in  which  to  place  our  in- 
ability and  give  play  to  our  modesty.  This  other 
area  for  us  is  mere  pretentious  nonsense  ;  and  on 
the  ground  of  our  weakness  we  do  not  feel  strong 
enough  to  assume  that  nonsense  is  fact.  We,  in 
other  words,  protest  against  the  senseless  attempt 
to  transcend  experience.  We  urge  that  a  mere 
doubt  entertained  may  involve  that  attempt,  and 
that  in  the  case  of  our  main  conclusion  it  certainly 
does  so.  Hence  in  its  outline  that  conclusion  for 
us  is  certain  ;  and  let  us  endeavour  to  see  how  far 
the  certainty  goes. 

Reality  is  one.  It  must  be  single,  because 
plurality,  taken  as  real,  contradicts  itself.     Plurality 


520 


REALITY. 


implies  relations,  and.  through  its  relations,  it  un- 
willingly asserts  always  a  superior  unity.  To  sup- 
pose the  universe  plural  is  therefore  to  contradict 
oneself  and,  after  all,  to  suppose  that  it  is  one.  Add 
one  world  to  another,  and  forthwith  both  worlds 
have  become  relative,  each  the  finite  appearance  of 
a  higher  and  single  Reality.  And  plurality  as 
appearance  (we  have  seen)  must  fall  within,  must 
belong  to,  and  must  qualify  the  unity. 

We  have  an  idea  of  this  unity  which,  to  some 
extent,  is  positive  (Chapters  .xiv.,  xx.,  xxvi.).  It  is 
true  that  how  in  detail  the  plurality  comes  together 
we  do  not  know.  And  it  is  true  again  that  unity, 
in  its  more  proper  sense,  is  known  only  as  contra- 
distinguished from  plurality.  Unity  therefore,  as  an 
aspect  over  against  and  defined  by  another  aspect, 
is  itself  but  appearance.  And  in  this  sense  the 
Real,  it  is  clear,  cannot  be  properly  called  one.  It 
is  possible,  however,  to  use  unity  with  a  different 
meaning. 

In  the  first  place  the  Real  is  qualified  by  all 
plurality.  It  owns  this  diversity  while  itself  it  is 
not  plural.  And  a  reality  owning  plurality  but 
above  it,  not  defined  as  against  it  but  absorbing  it 
together  with  the  one-sided  unity  which  forms  its 
opposite — such  a  reality  in  its  outline  is  certainly  a 
positive  idea. 

And  this  outline,  to  some  extent,  is  filled  in  by 
direct  experience.  I  will  lay  no  stress  here  on  that 
pre-relational  stage  of  existence  (p.  459),  which  we 
suppose  to  come  first  in  the  development  of  the 
soul.  I  will  refer  to  what  seems  plainer  and  less 
doubtful.  For  take  any  complex  psychical  state  in 
which  we  make  distinctions.  Here  we  have  a  con- 
sciousness of  plurality,  and  then  over  against  this 
we  may  attempt  to  gain  a  clear  idea  of  unity.  Now 
this  idea  of  unity,  itself  the  result  of  analysis,  is  de- 
termined by  opposition  to  the  internal  plurality  of 
distinctions.     And  hence,  as  one  aspect  over  against 


ULTIMATE    DOUBTS. 


52« 


another  aspect,  this  will  not  furnish  the  positive 
idea  of  unity  which  we  seek.  But,  apart  from  and 
without  any  such  explicit  idea,  we  may  be  truly  said 
to  feel  our  whole  psychical  state  as  one.  Above,  or 
rather  below,  the  relations  which  afterwards  we  may 
find,  it  seems  to  be  a  totality  in  which  differences 
already  are  combined.'  Our  state  seems  a  felt 
background  into  which  we  introduce  distinctions, 
and  it  seems,  at  the  same  time,  a  whole  in  which 
the  differences  inhere  and  pre-exist  Now  certainly, 
in  so  describing  our  state,  we  contradict  ourselves. 
For  the  fact  of  a  difference,  when  we  realize  and 
express  its  -strict  nature,  implies  in  its  essence  both 
relation  and  distinction.  In  other  words,  feelinij 
cannot  be  described,  for  it  cannot  without  trans- 
formation be  translated  into  thought.  Again,  in 
itself  this  indiscriminate  totality  is  inconsistent  and 
unstable.  Its  own  tendency  and  nature  is  to  pass 
beyond  itself  into  the  relational  consciousness,  into 
a  higher  stage  in  which  it  is  broken  up.  Still,  none 
the  less,  at  every  moment  this  vague  state  is  ex- 
perienced actually.  And  hence  we  cannot  deny 
that  complex  wholes  are  felt  as  single  experiences. 
For,  on  the  one  side,  these  states  are  not  simple, 
nor  again,  on  the  other  side,  are  they  plural  merely  ; 
nor  again  is  their  unity  explicit  and  held  in  relation 
with,  and  against,  their  plurality. 

We  may  find  this  e.xemplilied  most  easily  in  an 
ordinary  emotional  whole.  That  comes  to  us  as 
one,  yet  not  as  simple  ;  while  its  diversity,  at  least 
in  part,  is  not  yet  distinguished  and  broken  up  into 
relations.  Such  a  state  of  mind,  I  may  repeat,  is, 
as  such,  unstable  and  fleeting.  It  is  not  only 
changeable  otherwise,  but,  if  made  an  object,  it,  as 
such,  disappears.  The  emotion  we  attend  to  is, 
taken  strictly,  never  precisely  the  same  thing  as  the 
emotion  which  we   feel.      For  it  not  only  to  some 


'  Compare  here  Chapter  xix. 


REALITY. 


extent  has  been  transformed  by  internal  distinction, 
but  it  has  also  now  itself  become  a  factor  in  a  new 
felt  totality.  The  emotion  as  an  object,  and,  on  the 
other  side,  that  background  to  which  in  conscious- 
ness it  is  opposed,  have  both  become  subordinate 
elements  in  a  new  psychical  whole  of  feeling  (Chap- 
ter xi.x.).  Our  experience  is  always  from  time  to 
time  a  unity  which,  as  such,  is  destroyed  in  be- 
coming an  object.  But  one  such  emotional  whole 
in  its  destruction  gives  place  inevitably  to  another 
whole.  And  hence  what  we  feel,  while  it  lasts,  is 
felt  always  as  one,  yet  not  as  simple  nor  again  as 
broken  into  terms  and  relations. 

From  such  an  experience  of  unity  below  relations 
we  can  rise  to  the  idea  of  a  superior  unity  above 
them.  Thus  we  can  attach  a  full  and  positive 
meaning  to  (he  statement  that  Reality  is  one.  The 
stubborn  objector  seems  condemned,  in  any  case,  to 
aftirni  the  following  propositions.  In  the  first  place 
Reality  is  positive,  negation  falling  inside  it.  In 
the  second  place  it  is  qualified  positively  by  all  the 
plurality  which  it  embraces  and  subordinates.  And 
yet  itself,  in  the  third  place,  is  certainly  not  plural. 
Having  gone  so  far  I  myself  prefer,  as  the  least 
misleading  course,  to  assert  its  unity. 

Beyond  all  doubt  then  it  is  clear  that  Reality  is 
one.  It  has  unity,  but  we  must  go  on  to  ask,  a 
unity  of  what  .''  And  we  have  already  found  that 
all  we  know  consists  wholly  of  e.xperience.  Reality 
must  be,  therefore,  one  Experience,  and  to  doubt 
this  conclusion  is  impossible. 

We  can  discover  nothing  that  is  not  either  feeling 
or  thought  or  will  or  emotion  or  something  else  of 
the  kind  (Chapter  xiv.).  We  can  find  nothing  but 
this,  and  to  have  an  idea  of  anything  else  is  plainly 
impossible.  For  such  a  supposed  idea  is  either 
meaningless,  and  so  is  not  an  idea,  or  else  its  mean- 
ing will  be  found   tacitly  to  consist  in  experience. 


ULTIMATE    DOUIITS. 


523 


I 


The  Other,  which  it  asserts,  is  found  on  enquiry  to 
be  really  no  Other.  It  implies,  against  its  will  and 
unconsciously,  some  mode  of  experience ;  it  affirms 
something  else,  if  you  please,  but  still  something 
else  of  the  same  kind.  And  the  form  of  otherness 
and  of  opposition,  again,  has  no  sense  save  as  an 
internal  aspect  of  that  which  it  endeavours  to 
oppose.  We  have,  in  short,  in  the  end  but  one 
idea,  and  that  idea  is  positive.  And  hence  to  deny 
this  idea  is,  in  effect,  to  assert  it ;  and  to  doubt  it, 
actually  and  without  a  delusion,  is  not  possible. 

If  I  attempted  to  labour  this  point,  I  should  per- 
haps but  obscure  it.  Show  me  your  idea  of  an 
Other,  not  a  part  of  experience,  and  I  will  show 
you  at  once  that  it  is,  throughout  and  wholly, 
nothing  else  at  all.  But  an  effort  to  anticipate,  and 
to  deal  in  advance  with  every  form  of  self-delusion, 
would,  I  think,  hardly  enlighten  us.  I  shall  there- 
fore assume  this  main  principle  as  clearly  esta- 
blished, and  shall  endeavour  merely  to  develope  it 
and  to  free  it  from  certain  obscurities. 

I  will  recur  first  to  the  difficult  subject  of  Solip- 
sism. This  has  been  discussed  perhaps  sufficiently 
in  Chapter  xxi..  but  a  certain  amount  of  repetition 
may  be  useful  here.  It  may  be  objected  that,  if 
Reality  is  proved  to  be  one  experience,  Solipsism 
follows.  Again,  if  we  can  transcend  the  self  at  all,  > 
then  we  have  made  our  way,  it   may  be  urged,  to  ^-l' 

something  perhaps  not  e.\j>erience.     Our  main  con-  /^-f*'"'^  ,> 
elusion,    in    short,    may    be    met    not    directly    but        9'^^ 
through    a    dilemma.      It  may  be    threatened   with 
destruction  by  a  self- contradictory  development  of 
its  own  nature. 

Now  my  answer  to  this  dilemma  is  a  denial  of 
that  which  it  assumes.  It  assumes,  in  the  first 
place,  that  my  self  is  as  wide  as  my  experience. 
And  it  assumes,  in  the  second  place,  that  my  self  is 
something  hard  and  exclusive.  Hence,  if  you  are 
inside  you  are   not  outside  at  all,  and,   if  you   are 


5=4 


REALITY. 


outside,  you  are  at  once  in  a  different  world.  But 
we  iiave  shown  that  these  assumptions  are  mistaken 
(Chapters  xxi.  and  xxiii.);  and,  with  their  withdrawal, 
the  dilemma  falls  of  itself. 

Finite  centres  of  feelinor,  while  they  last,  are  (so 
far  as  we  know)  not  directly  p'^rvious  to  one 
another.  But,  on  the  one  hand,  a  self  is  not  the 
same  as  such  a  centre  of  experience  ;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  in  every  centre  the  whole  Reality  is 
present.  Finite  experience  never,  in  any  of  its 
forms,  is  shut  in  by  a  wall.  It  has  in  itself,  and  as 
an  inseparable  aspect  of  its  own  nature,  the  all- 
penetrating  Reality.  And  there  never  is,  and  there 
never. was,  any  time  when  in  experience  the  world 
and  self  were  quite  identical.  For,  if  we  reach  a 
stace  where  in  feelingr  the  self  and  world  are  not 
yet  different,  at  that  stage  neither  as  yet  exists. 
But  in  our  first  immediate  experience  the  whole 
Reality  is  present.  This  does  not  mean  that  every 
other  centre  of  experience,  as  such,  is  included  there. 
It  means  that  every  centre  qualifies  the  Whole,  and 
that  the  Whole,  as  a  substantive,  is  present  in  each 
of  these  its  adjectives.  Then  from  immediate  ex- 
perience the  self  emerges,  and  is  set  apart  by  a 
distinction.  The  self  and  the  world  are  elements, 
each  separated  in,  and  each  contained  by  experience. 
And  perhaps  in  all  cases  the  self — and  at  any  rate 
always  the  soul  ' — involves  and  only  exists  through 
an  intellectual  construction.  The  self  is  thus  a  con- 
struction based  on,  and  itself  transcending,  immed- 
iate experience.     Hence  to   describe  all  experience 

'  These  terms  must  not  be  taken  as  everywhere  equivalent. 
'I'here  certainly  is  no  self  or  soul  witliout  a  centre  of  feeling. 
But  there  may  be  centres  of  feeling  which  are  no.t  selves,  and 
again  not  souls  {see  below).  Possibly  also  some  selves  are  too 
fleeting  to  be  tailed  souls,  while  almost  certainly  there  are  souls, 
which  are  not  jjrojjerly  selves.  The  latter  term  should  not  be 
used  at  all  where  there  is  in  no  sense  a  di.stinciion  of  self  from 
not-self.  And  it  can  hardly  always  be  used  in  precisely  the  same 
sense  (Chapter  ix.). 


ULTIMATE    DOUDTS. 


525 


I 


as  the  mere  aJjeclive  of  a  self,  taken  in  any  sense, 
is  indefensible.  And,  as  for  transcendence,- — from  the 
very  first  the  self  is  transcended  by  experience.  Or 
we  may  in  another  way  put  this  so.  The  self  is  one 
of  the  results  gained  by  transcending  the  first  im- 
perfect form  of  experience.  But  experience  and 
Reality  are  each  the  same  thing  when  taken  at  full, 
and  they  cannot  be  transcended. 

I  may  be  allowed  to  repeat  this.  Experience  in 
its  early  form,  as  a  centre  of  immediate  feeling,  is 
not  yet  either  self  or  not-self.  It  qualifies  the 
Reality,  which  of  course  is  present  within  it;  and 
its  own  finite  content  indissolubly  connects  it  with 
the  total  universe.  But  for  itself — if  it  could  be 
for  itself — this  finite  centre  would  be  the  world. 
Then  through  its  own  imperfection  such  first  ex- 
perience is  broken  up.  Its  unity  gives  way  before 
inner  unrest  and  outer  impact  in  one.  And  then 
self  and  Ego,  on  one  side,  are  produced  by  this 
development,  and,  on  the  other  side,  appear  other 
selves  and  the  world  and  God.  These  all  appear 
as  the  contents  of  one  finite  experience,  and  they 
really  are  genuinely  and  actually  contained  in  it. 
They  are  contained  in  it  but  partially,  and  through 
a  more  or  less  inconsiderable  portion  of  their  area. 
Still  this  portion,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is  their  very 
being  and  reality  ;  and  a  finite  experience  already 
is  partially  the  universe.  Hence  there  is  no 
question  here  of  stepping  over  a  line  from  one 
world  to  another.  Experience  is  already  in  both 
worlds,  and  is  one  thing  with  their  being ;  and  the 
question  is  merely  to  what  extent  this  common 
being  can  be  carried 'out,  whether  in  practice  or  in 
knowledge.  In  other  words  the  total  universe, 
present  imperfectly  in  finite  experience,  would,  if 
completed,  be  merely  the  completion  of  this  experi- 
ence. And  to  speak  of  transcendence  into  another 
world  is  therefore  mistaken. 

For  certain  purposes  what  I   experience  can  be 


526 


REALITY. 


considered  as  the  stale  of  my  self,  or,  again,  of  my 
soul.  It  can  be  so  considered,  because  in  one 
aspect  it  actually  is  so.  But  this  one  aspect  may 
be  an  infinitesmal  fragment  of  its  being.  And  never 
in  any  case  can  what  I  experience  be  the  mere 
adjective  of  my  self.  My  self  is  not  the  immediate, 
nor  again  is  it  the  ultimate,  reality.  Immediate 
reality  is  an  experience  either  containing  both  self 
and  not-self,  or  containing  as  yet  neither.  And 
ultimate  reality,  on  the  other  hand,  would  be  the 
total  universe. 

In  a  former  chapter  we  noticed  the  truths  con- 
tained in  Solipsism.  Everything,  my  self  included, 
is  essential  to.  and  is  inseparable  from,  the  Absolute. 
And.  again,  it  is  only  in  feeling  that  I  can  directly 
encounter  Realit)'.  But  there  is  no  need  here  to 
dwell  on  these  sides  of  the  truth.  My  experience 
is  essential  to  the  world,  but  the  world  is  not,  e.vcept 
in  one  aspect,  my  experience.  The  world  and  ex- 
perience are,  taken  at  large,  the  same.  And  my 
experience  and  its  states,  in  a  sense,  actually  are 
the  whole  world  ;  for  to  this  slight  extent  the  one 
Reality  is  actually  my  self.  But  it  is  less  misleading 
to  assert,  conversely,  that  the  total  world  is  my 
experience.  For  it  appears  there,  and  in  each 
appearance  its  single  being  already  is  imperfectly 
includctl. 


Let  us  turn  from  an  objection  based  on  an 
irrational  prejudice,  and  let  us  go  on  to  consider  a 
point  of  some  interest.  Can  the  Absolute  be  said 
to  consist  and  to  be  made  up  of  souls  ?  The 
question  is  ambiguous,  and  must  be  discussed  in 
several  senses.  Is  there — let  us  ask  first — in  the 
universe  any  sort  of  matter  not  contained  in  finite 
centres  of  experience  ?  It  seems  at  first  sight 
natural  to  point  at  once  to  the  relations  between 
these  centres.  But  such  relations,  we  find  on  re- 
flection, have  been,  so  far,  included  in  the  percep- 


ULTIMATE    DOUUTS. 


527 


I 


tlon  and  thought  of  the  centres  themselves.  And 
what  the  question  comes  to  is,  rather,  this,  Can 
there  be  matter  of  experience,  in  any  form,  whicK 
does  not  enter  as  an  element  into  some  finite 
centre  ? 

In  view  of  our  ignorance  this  question  may  seem 
unanswerable.  We  do  not  know  why  or  how  the 
Absolute  divides  itself  into  centres,  or  the  way  in 
which,  so  divided,  it  still  remains  one.  The  relation 
of  the  many  experiences  to  the  single  experience, 
and  so  to  one  another,  is,  in  the  end.  beyond  us. 
And,  if  so,  why  should  there  not  be  elements  ex- 
perienced in  the  total,  and  yet  not  experienced 
within  any  subordinate  focus.  We  may  indeed, 
from  the  other  side,  confront  this  ignorance  and  this 
question  with  a  doubt.  Has  such  an  unattached 
element,  or  margin  of  elements,  any  meaning  at  all  ? 
Have  we  any  right  to  entertain  such  an  idea  as 
rational  ?  Does  not  our  ignorance  in  fact  forbid  us 
to  assume  the  possibility  of  any  matter,  experienced 
apart  from  a  finite  whole  of  feeling .''  But,  after 
consideration,  I  do  not  find  that  this  doubt  should 
prevail.  Certainly  it  is  only  by  an  abstraction  that 
I  can  form  the  idea  of  such  unattached  elements, 
and  this  abstraction,  it  may  seem,  is  not  legitimate. 
And,  if  the  elements  were  taken  as  quite  loose,  if 
they  were  not  still  inseparable  factors  in  a  whole  of 
experience,  then  the  abstraction  clearly  would  lead 
to  an  inconsistent  idea.  And  such  an  idea,  we 
have  agreed,  must  not  be  regarded  as  possible. 
But,  in  the  present  case,  the  elements,  unattached 
to  any  finite  centre,  are  still  subordinate  to  and 
integral  aspects  of  the  Whole.  And,  since  this 
Whole  is  one  experience,  the  position  is  altered. 
Th«  abstraction  from  a  finite  centre  does  not  lead 
visibly  to  self-contradiction.  And  hence  I  cannot 
refuse  to  regard  its  result  as  possible. 

But  this  possibility,  on  the  other  side,  seems  to 
have  no  importance.     If  we  take  it  to  be  fact,  we 


5-^8 


REALITY. 


shall  not  find  that  it  makes  much  difference  to  the 
Whole.  And,  again,  for  so  taking  it  there  appears 
to  be  almost  no  ground.  Let  us  briefly  consider 
these  two  points.  That  elements  of  experience 
should  be  unattached  would  (we  saw)  be  a  serious 
matter,  if  they  were  unattached  altogether  and 
absolutely.  But  since  in  any  case  all  comes  to- 
gether and  is  fused  in  the  Whole,  and  since  this 
Whole  in  any  case  is  a  single  experience,  the  main 
result  appears  to  me  to  be  quite  unaffected.  The 
fact  that  some  experience-matter  does  not  directly 
qualify  any  finite  centre,  is  a  fact  from  which  I  can 
draw  no  further  conclusion.  But  for  holding  this 
fact,  in  the  second  place,  there  is  surely  no  good 
reason.  The  number  of  finite  centres  and  their 
diversity  is  (we  know)  very  great,  and  we  may  fairly 
suppose  it  to  extend  much  beyond  our  knowledge. 
Nor  do  the  relations,  which  are  "between"  these 
centres,  occasion  difficulty.  Relations  of  course 
cannot  fall  somewhere  outside  of  reality  ;  and,  if 
they  really  were  "  between  "  the  centres,  we  should 
have  to  assume  some  matter  of  experience  external 
and  additional  to  these.  The  conclusion  would 
follow ;  and  we  have  seen  that,  rightly  understood, 
it  is  possible.  But,  as  things  are,  it  seems  no  less 
gratuitous.  There  is  nothing,  so  far  as  I  see,  to 
suggest  that  any  aspect  of  any  relation  lies  outside 
the  experience-matter  contained  in  finite  centres. 
The  relations,  as  such,  do  not  and  cannot  exist  in 
the  Absolute.  And  the  question  is  whether  that 
higher  experience,  which  contains  and  transforms 
the  relations,  demands  any  element  not  experienced 
somehow  within  the  centres.  For  assuming  such 
an  element  1  can  myself  perceive  no  ground.  And 
since,  even  if  we  assume  this,  the  main  result  segms 
to  remain  unaltered,  the  best  course  is,  perhaps,  to 
discard  it  as  unreal.  It  is  better,  on  the  whole,  to 
conclude  that  no  element  of  Reality  falls  outside 
the  experience  of  finite  centres. 


i 


ULTIMATE   DOUBTS. 


529 


Are  we  then  to  assert  that  the  Absolute  consists 
of  souls?  That,  in  my  opinion,  for  two  reasons 
would  be  incorrect.  A  centre  of  experience,  first, 
is  not  the  same  thing  as  either  a  soul  or,  again,  a 
self.  It  need  not  contain  the  distinction  of  not-self 
from  self;  and,  whether  it  contains  that  or  not,  in 
neither  case  is  it,  properly,  a  self.  It  will  be  either 
below,  or  else  wider  than  and  above,  the  distinction. 
And  a  soul,  as  we  have  seen,  is  always  the  creature 
of  an  intellectual  construction.  It  cannot  be  the 
same  thing  with  a  mere  centre  of  immediate  ex- 
perience. Nor  again  can  we  affirm  that  every 
centre  implies  and  entails  in  some  sense  a  corre- 
sponding soul.  For  the  duration  of  such  centres 
may  perhaps  be  so  momentary,  that  no  one,  except 
to  save  a  theory,  could  call  them  souls.  Hence  we 
cannot  maintain  that  souls  contain  all  the  matter  of 
experience  which  fills  the  world. 

And  in  any  case,  secondly,  the  Absolute  would 
not  consist  of  souls.  Such  a  phrase  implies  a  mode 
of  union  which  we  can  not  regard  as  ultimate.  It 
suggests  that  in  the  Absolute  finite  centres  are 
maintained  and  respected,  and  that  we  may  con- 
sider them,  as  such,  to  persist  and  to  be  merely 
ordered  and  arranged.  Hut  not  like  this  (we  have 
seen)  is  the  final  destiny  and  last  truth  of  things. 
We  have  a  re-arrangement  not  merely  of  things  but 
of  their  internal  elements.  We  have  an  all-per- 
vasive transfusion  with  a  re-blending  of  all  material. 
And  we  can  hardly  say  that  the  Absolute  consists 
of  finite  things,  when  the  things,  as  such,  are  there 
transmuted  and  have  lost  their  individual  natures.' 

'  For  this  reason  Humanity,  or  an  organism,  kingdom,  or 
society  of  selves,  is  not  an  ultimate  idei  It  implies  an  union 
too  incomplete,  and  it  ascribes  reality  in  too  high  a  sense  to 
finite  pieces  of  appearance.  These  two  defects  are,  of  course,  in 
principle  one.  An  organism  or  society,  including  every  self  past 
present  and  future — and  we  can  hardly  take  it  at  less  than  this 
— is  itself  an  idea  to  me  obscure,  if  not  quite  inconsistent.  But, 
in  any  case,  its  reality  and  truth  cannot  be  ultimate.     And,  for 

A.  R.  MM 


lb 


530 


REALITY. 


Reality  then  is  one,  and  it  is  experience.  It  is 
not  merely  my  experience,  nor  again  can  we  say  that 
it  consists  of  souls  or  selves.  And  it  cannot  be  a 
unity  of  experience  and  also  of  something  beside  ; 
for  the  something  beside,  when  we  examine  it,  turns 
out  always  to  be  experience.  We  verified  this  above 
(Chapters  xxii.  and  xxvi.)  in  the  case  of  Nature. 
Nature,  like  all  else,  in  a  sense  remains  inexplicable. 
It  is  in  the  end  an  arrangement,  a  way  of  happening 
coexistent  and  successive,  as  to  which  at  last  we 
clearly  are  unable  to  answer  the  question  Why. 
But  this  inability,  like  others,  does  not  afifect  the 
truth  of  our  result.  Nature  is  an  abstraction  from 
experience,  and  in  experience  it  is  not  co-ordinate 
with  spirit  or  mind.  For  mind,  we  have  seen,  has 
a  reality  higher  than  Nature,  and  the  essence  of  the 
physical  world  already  implies  that  in  which  it  is 
absorbed  and  transcended.  Nature  by  itself  is  but 
an  indefensible  division  in  the  whole  of  experience. 

This  total  unity  of  experience,  I  have  pointed 
out,  cannot,  as  such,  be  directly  verified.  We  know 
its  nature,  but  in  outline  only,  and  not  in  detail. 
Feeling,  as  we  have  seen,  supplies  us  with  a  positive 
idea  of  non-relational  unity.  The  idea  is  imperlect, 
but  is  sufficient  to  serve  as  a  positive  basis.  And 
we  are  compelled  further  by  our  principle  to  believe 
in  a  Whole  qualified,  and  qualified  non-relationally, 
by  every  fraction  of  experience.  But  this  unity  of 
all  experiences,  if  itself  not  experience,  would  be 
meaningless.  The  Whole  is  one  experience  then, 
and  such  a  unity  higher  than  all  relations,  a  unity 
which  contains  and  transforms  them,  has  positive 
meaning.  Of  the  manner  of  its  being  in  detail  we 
are  utterly  ignorant,  but  of  its  general  nature  we 


I 


myself,  even  in   Ethics  I  do  not  see  how  such  an  idea  can  be 
insisted  on.     The  perfection  of  the  Whole  has  to  realise  itself  j 
in  and  through  me  ;  and,  without  question,  this  Whole  is  very 
largely  social.     But   I  do  not  see  my  way  to  the  assertion  that, 
even  for  Ethics,  it  is  notliing  else  at  all  (pp.  415,  431). 


ULTIMATE    DOUBTS. 


53r 


^ 


possess  a  positive  though  abstract  knowledge.  And, 
in  attempting  to  deny  or  to  doubt  the  result  we 
have  gained,  we  find  ourselves  once  more  uncon- 
sciously aftirming  it. 

The  Absolute,  though  known,  is  higher,  in  a  sense, 
than  our  experience  and  knowledge  ;  and  in  this  con- 
nection I  will  ask  if  it  has  personality.  At  the  point 
we  have  reached  such  a  question  can  be  dealt  with 
rapidly.  We  can  answer  it  at  once  in  the  affirma- 
tive or  negative  according  to  its  meaning.  Since 
the  Absolute  has  everything,  it  of  course  must  pos- 
sess personality.  And  if  by  personality  we  are 
to  understand  the  highest  form  of  finite  spiritual 
development,  then  certainly  in  an  eminent  degree 
the  Absolute  is  jyersonal.  For  the  higher  (we  may 
repeat)  is  always  the  more  real,  And,  since  in  the 
Absolute  the  very  lowest  modes  of  experience  are 
not  lost,  it  seems  even  absurd  to  raise  such  a 
question  about  personality. 

And  this  is  not  the  sense  in  which  the  question  is 
usually  put.  "  Personal  "  is  employed  in  effect  with 
a  restrictive  meaning  ;  for  it  is  used  to  exclude  what 
is  above,  as  well  as  below,  personality.  The  super- 
personal,  in  other  words,  is  either  openly  or  tacitly 
regarded  as  impossible.  Personality  is  taken  as  the 
highest  possible  way  of  experience,  and  naturally,  if 
so,  the  Absolute  cannot  be  super-personal.  This 
conclusion,  with  the  assumption  on  which  it  rests, 
may  be  summarily  rejected.  It  has  been,  indeed, 
refuted  beforehand  by  previous  discussions.  If  the 
term  "  personal  "  is  to  bear  anything  like  its  ordinary 
sense,  assuredly  the  Absolute  is  not  merely  personal. 
It  is  not  personal,  because  it  is  personal  and  more. 
It  is,  in  a  word,  super-personal. 

I  intend  here  not  to  enquire  into  the  possible 
meanings  of  personality.  On  the  nature  of  the  self 
and  of  self-consciousness  I  have  spoken  already,"  and 


'  See  Cliapters  ix.  and  x.     ComiMre  xxi.  and  xxiii. 


532  REALITY. 

I  will  merely  add  here  that  for  me  a  person  is  finite 
or  is  meaningless.  But  the  question  raised  as  to  the 
Absolute  may,  I  think,  be  more  briefly  disposed  of. 
If  by  calling  it  personal  you  mean  only  that  it  is 
nothing  but  experience,  that  it  contains  all  the 
highest  that  we  possibly  can  know  and  feel,  and  is 
a  unity  in  which  the  details  are  utterly  pervaded 
and  embraced — then  in  this  conclusion  I  am  with 
you.  But  your  employment  of  the  term  personal  I 
very  much  regret  I  regret  this  use  mainly  not 
because  I  consider  it  incorrect — that  between  us 
would  matter  little — but  because  it  is  misleading  and 
directly  serves  the  cause  of  dishonesty. 

For  most  of  those,  who  insist  on  what  they  call 
"  the  personality  of  God,"  are  intellectually  dishonest. 
They  desire  one  conclusion,  and,  to  reach  it,  they 
argue  for  another.  But  the  second,  if  proved,  is 
quite  different,  and  serves  their  purpose  only  be- 
cause they  obscure  it  and  confound  it  with  the  first 
And  it  is  by  their  practical  purpose  that  the  result 
may  here  be  judged.  The  Deity,  which  they  want, 
is  of  course  finite,  a  person  much  like  themselves, 
with  thoughts  and  feelings  limited  and  mutable  in  the 
process  of  time.  They  desire  a  person  in  the  sense  of 
a  self,  amongst  and  over  against  other  selves,  moved 
by  personal  relations  and  feelings  towards  these 
others — feelings  and  relations  which  are  altered  by 
the  conduct  of  the  others.  And,  for  their  purpose, 
what  is  not  this,  is  really  nothing.  Now  with  this  de- 
sire in  itself  I  am  not  here  concerned.  Of  course  for 
us  to  ask  seriously  if  the  Absolute  can  be  personal  in 
such  a  way,  would  be  quite  absurd.  And  my  busi- 
ness for  the  moment  is  not  with  truth  but  with  intel- 
lectual honesty. 

It  would  be  honest  first  of  all  to  state  openly  the 
conclusion  aimed  at,  and  then  to  enquire  if  this  con- 
clusion can  be  maintained.  But  what  is  not  honest 
is  to  suppress  the  point  really  at  issue,  to  desire  the 
personality  of  the  Deity  in  one  sense,  and  then  to 


t 


ULTIMATE    DOUBTS. 


533 


contend  for  it  in  another,  and  to  do  one's  best  to 
ignore  the  chasm  which  separates  the  two.  Once 
give  up  your  finite  and  mutable  person,  and  you  have 
parted  with  everythincr  which,  for  you,  makes  per- 
sonality important.  Nor  will  you  bridge  the  chasm 
by  the  sliding  extension  of  a  word.  You  will  only 
made  a  fog,  where  you  can  cry  out  that  you  are  on 
both  sides  at  once.  And  towards  increasing  this  fog 
I  decline  to  contribute.  It  would  be  useless,  in  such 
company  and  in  such  an  atmosphere,  to  discuss  the 
meaning  of  personality — if  indeed  the  word  actually 
has  any  one  meaning.  For  me  it  is  sufficient  to 
know,  on  one  side,  that  the  Absolute  is  not  a  finite 
person.  Whether,  on  the  other  side,  personality  in 
some  eviscerated  remnant  of  sense  can  be  applied 
to  it,  is  a  question  intellectually  unimportant  and 
practically  trifling. 

With  regard  to  the  personality  of  the  Absolute 
we  must  guard  against  two  one-sided  errors.  The 
Absolute  is  not  personal,  nor  is  it  moral,  nor  is  it 
beautiful  or  true.  And  yet  in  these  denials  we  may 
be  falling  into  worse  mistakes.  For  it  would  be  far 
more  incorrect  to  assert  that  the  Absolute  is  either 
false,  or  ugly,  or  bad,  or  is  something  even  beneath 
the  application  of  predicates  such  as  these.  And  it 
is  better  to  affirm  personality  than  to  call  the  Absol- 
ute impersonal.  But  neither  mistake  should  be 
necessary.  The  Absolute  stands  above,  and  not 
below,  its  internal  distinctions.  It  does  not  eject 
them,  but  it  includes  them  as  elements  in  its  fulness. 
To  speak  in  other  language,  it  is  not  the  indifference 
but  the  concrete  identity  of  all  extremes.  But  it  is 
better  in  this  connection  to  call  it  super-personal. 

We  have  seen  that  Reality  is  one,  and  is  a  single 
experience  ;  and  we  may  pass  from  this  to  consider 
a  difficult  question.  Is  the  Absolute  happy  ?  This 
might  mean,  can  pleasure,  as  such,  be  predicated  of 
the  Absolute  .•'     And,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  pre- 


534  REALITY. 

ceding  chapter,  this  is  not  permissible.  We  found 
that  there  is  a  balance  of  pleasure  over  and  above 
pain,  and  we  know  from  experience  that  in  a  mixed 
state  such  a  balance  may  be  pleasant.  And  we  are 
sure  that  the  Absolute  possesses  and  enjoys  somehow 
this  balance  of  pleasure.  But  to  go  further  seems 
impossible.  Pleasure  may  conceivably  be  so  sup- 
plemented and  modified  by  addition,  that  it  does  not 
remain  precisely  that  which  we  call  pleasure.  Its 
pleasantness  certainly  could  not  be  lost,  but  it  might 
be  blended  past  recognition  with  other  aspects  of  the 
Whole.  The  Absolute  then,  perhaps,  strictly,  does 
not  feel  pleasure.  But,  if  so,  that  is  only  because  it 
has  something  in  which  pleasure  is  included. 

But  at  this  point  we  are  met  by  the  doubt,  with 
which  already  we  have  partly  dealt  (Chapter  xiv.). 
Is  our  conclusion,  after  all,  the  right  one  ?  Is  it  not 
possible,  after  all,  that  in  the  Absolute  there  is  a 
balance  of  pain,  or,  if  not  of  pain,  of  something  else 
which  is  at  all  events  no  better  ?  On  this  difficult 
point  I  will  state  at  once  the  result  which  seems  true. 
Such  a  balance  is  possible  in  the  lowest  sense  of 
barely  possible.  It  does  not  seem  to  me  unmeaning, 
nor  can  I  find  that  it  is  self-contradictory.  If  we  try 
to  deny  that  the  Absolute  is  one  and  is  experience, 
our  denial  becomes  unmeaning,  or  of  itself  turns 
round  into  an  assertion.  But  I  do  not  see  that  this 
is  the  case  with  a  denial  of  happiness. 

It  is  true  that  we  can  know  nothing  of  pain  and 
pleasure  except  from  our  experience.  It  is  true  that 
in  that  experience  well-nigh  everything  points  in  one 
direction.  There  is,  so  far  as  I  know,  not  one  special 
fact  which  suggests  that  pain  is  compatible  with 
unity  and  concord.  And,  if  so,  why  should  we  not 
insist,  "Such  is  the  nature  of  pain,  and  hence  to 
deny  this  nature  is  to  fall  into  self-contradiction  "  ? 
What,  in  short,  is  the  other  possibility  which  has  not 
been  included  ?     I  will  endeavour  to  state  it. 

The  world,  that  we  can  observe,  is  certainly  not 


ULTIMATE    DOUBTS. 


535 


all  the  universe  ;  and  we  do  not  know  how  much 
there  may  be  which  we  cannot  observe.  And  hence 
everywhere  an  indefinite  supplement  from  the  un- 
known is  possible.  Now  might  there  not  be  condi- 
tions, invisible  to  us,  which  throughout  our  experi- 
ence modify  the  action  of  pleasure  and  pain  ?  In 
this  way  what  seems  to  be  essential  to  pain  may 
actually  not  be  so.  It  may  really  come  from  unseen 
conditions  which  are  but  accidental.  And  so  pain, 
after  all,  might  be  compatible  with  harmony  and 
system.  Against  this  it  may  be  contended  that  pain 
itself,  on  such  a  hypothesis,  would  be  neutralised, 
and  that  its  painfulnes.s  also  would  now  be  gone. 
Again  it  may  be  urged  that  what  is  accidental  on  a 
certain  scale  has  become  essential,  essential  not  less 
effectively  because  indirectly.  But,  though  these 
contentions  have  force,  I  do  not  find  them  conclus- 
ive. The  idea  of  a  painful  universe,  in  the  end, 
seems  to  be  neither  quite  meaningless  nor  yet  visibly 
self-contradictory.  And  I  am  compelled  to  allow 
that,  speaking  strictly,  we  must  call  it  possible. 

But  such  a  possibility,  on  the  other  side,  possesses 
almost  no  value.  It  of  course  rests,  so  far  as  it  goes, 
on  positive  knowledge.  We  know  that  the  world's 
character,  within  certain  limits,  admits  of  indefinite 
supplementation.  And  the  supplementation,  here 
proposed,  seems  in  accordance  with  this  general 
nature  of  known  reality.  That  is  all  it  has  in  its 
favour,  an  abstract  compliance  with  a  general  char- 
acter of  things  ;  and  beyond  this  there  seems  to  be 
not  one  shred  of  particular  evidence.  But  against 
it  there  is  everything  which  in  particular  we  know 
about  the  subject.  And  the  possibility  is  thus  left 
with  a  value  too  small  to  be  estimated.  We  can 
only  .say  that  it  exists,  and  that  it  is  hardly  worth  con- 
sidering further. 

But  we  have,  with  this,  crossed  the  line  which 
separates    absolute    from    conditional    knowledge. 


536  REALITY. 

That  Reality  is  one  system  which  contains  in  itself 
.^  all  experience,  and,  again,  that  this  system  itself  is 

experience — ^so  far  we  may  be  said  to  know  abso- 
lutely and  unconditionally.'  Up  to  this  point  our 
judgment  is  infallible,  and  its  opposite  is  quite  impos- 
sible. The  chance  of  error,  in  other  words,  is  so 
far  nothing  at  all.  But  outside  this  boundary  every 
judgment  is  finite,  and  so  conditional.  And  here 
every  truth,  because  incomplete,  is  more  or  less 
erroneous.  And  because  the  amount  of  incomplete- 
ness remains  unknown,  it  may  conceivably  go  so  far, 
in  any  case,  as  to  destroy  the  judgment.  The  opf>os- 
ite  no  longer  is  impossible  absolutely ;  but,  from 
this  point  downwards,  it  remains  but  impossible  rela- 
tively and  subject  to  a  condition. 

Anything  is  absolute  when  all  its  nature  is  con- 
tained within  itself  It  is  unconditional  when  every 
condition  of  its  being  falls  inside  it.  It  is  free  from 
chance  of  error  when  any  opposite  is  quite  incon- 
ceivable. Such  characters  belong  to  the  statement 
that  Reality  is  experience  and  is  one.  For  these 
truths  are  not  subordinate,  but  are  general  truths 
about  Reality  as  a  whole.  They  do  not  exhaust  it, 
but  in  outline  they  give  its  essence.  The  Real,  in 
other  words,  is  more  than  they,  but  always  more  of 
the  same.  There  is  nothing,  which  in  idea  you  can 
add  to  it,  that  fails,  when  understood,  to  fall  under 
these  general  truths.  And  hence  every  doubt  and 
all  chance  of  error  become  unmeaning.  Error  and 
doubt  have  their  place  only  in  the  subordinate  and 
|!  finite  region,  and  within  the  limits  prescribed  by  the 

ii  character   of  the  Whole.     And   the  Other  has  no 

meaning  where  any  Other  turns  out  to  be  none.  It 
is  useless  again  to  urge  that  an  Other,  though  not 
yet  conceived,  may  after  all  prove  conceivable.  It 
is  idle  to  object  that  the  impossible  means  no  more 
than  what  you  have  not  yet  found.     For  we  have 

'  This  statement  will  be  modified  lower  down. 


ULTIMATE    DOUBTS. 


537 


seen  that  privation  and  failure  imply  always  an  out- 
lying field  of  reality  ;  and  such  an  outlying  field 
is  here  unmeaning.  To  say  "  you  might  find  it" 
sounds  modest,  but  it  assumes  positively  a  sphere  in 
which  the  thing  might  be  found.  And  here  the 
assumption  contradicts  itself,  and  with  that  contra- 
diction the  doubt  bodily  disappears. 

The  criterion  of  truth  may  be  called  inconceiv- 
ability of  the  opposite,  but  it  is  essentia!  to  know 
what  we  mean  by  such  inability.  Is  this  absolute 
or  relative,  and  to  what  extent  is  it  due  to  privation 
and  mere  failure  ?  We  have  in  fact,  once  more  here, 
to  clear  our  ideas  as  to  the  meaning  of  impossibility 
(Chapters  xxiv.  and  xxvi).  Now  the  impossible 
may  either  be  absolute  or  relative,  but  it  can  never 
be  directly  based  on  our  impotence.  For  a  thing  is 
impossible  always  because  it  contradicts  positive 
knowledge.  Where  the  knowledge  is  relative,  that 
knowledge  is  certainly  more  or  less  conditioned  by 
our  impotence.  And  hence,  through  that  impotence, 
the  impossibility  maybe  more  or  less  weakened  and 
made  conditional.  But  it  never  is  created  by  or 
rests  upon  simple  failure.  In  the  end  one  has  to 
say  "  I  must  not,"  not  because  I  am  unable,  but 
because  I  am  prevented. 

The  impossible  absolutely  is  what  contradicts  the 
known  nature  of  Reality.  And  the  impossible,  in 
this  sense,  is  self- contradictory.  It  is  indeed  an 
attempt  to  deny  which,  in  the  very  act,  unwittingly 
affirms.  Since  here  our  positive  knowledge  is  all 
embracing,  it  can  rest  on  nothing  external.  Out- 
side this  knowledge  there  is  not  so  much  as  an 
empty  space  in  which  our  impotence  could  fall. 
And  every  inability  and  failure  already  presupposes 
and  belongs  to  our  known  world. 

The  impossible  relatively  is  what  contradicts  any 
subordinate  piece  of  knowledge.  It  cannot  be,  un- 
less something  which  we  hold  for  true  is,  as  such, 
given  up.    The  impossibility  here  will  vary  in  degree, 


533  REALITV. 

according  to  the  strength  of  that  knowledge  with 
which  it  conflicts.  And,  once  more  here,  it  does  not 
consist  in  our  failure  and  impotence.  The  impos- 
sible is  not  rejected,  in  other  words,  because  we 
cannot  find  it  It  is  rejected  because  we  find  it,  and 
find  it  in  collision  with  positive  knowledge.  But 
what  is  true  on  the  other  side  is  that  our  knowledge 
here  is  finite  and  fallible.  It  has  to  be  conditional 
on  account  of  our  inability  and  impotence. 

Before  I  return  to  this  last  point,  I  will  repeat  the 
same  truth  from  another  side  A  thing  is  real 
when,  and  in  so  far  as,  its  opposite  is  impossible. 
But  in  the  end  its  opposite  is  impossible  because, 
and  in  so  far  as,  the  thing  is  real.  And,  according 
to  the  amount  of  reality  which  anything  possesses, 
to  that  extent  its  opposite  is  inconceivable.  The 
more,  in  other  words,  that  anything  exhausts  the 
field  of  possibility,  the  less  possible  becomes  that 
which  would  essentially  alter  it  Now,  in  the  case 
of  such  truth  as  we  have  called  absolute,  the  field 
of  possibility  is  exhausted.  Reality  is  there,  and 
the  opposite  of  Reality  is  not  privation  but  absolute 
nothingness.  There  can  be  no  outside,  because  al- 
ready what  is  inside  is  everything.  But  the  case  is 
altered  when  we  come  to  subordinate  truths.  These, 
being  not  self-subsistent,  are  conditioned  by  what  is 
partly  unknown,  and  certainly  to  that  extent  they 
are  dependent  on  our  inability.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  our  criterion  of  their  truth  and  strength  is 
'positive.  The  more  they  are  coherent  and  wide — 
the  more  fully  they  realize  the  idea  of  system — so 
much  the  more  at  once  are  they  real  and  true' 
And  so  much  the  more  what  would  subvert  them 
becomes  impossible.  The  opposite  is  inconceivable, 
according  and  in  proportion  as  it  conflicts  with  posi- 
tive reality. 

We  have  seen  now  that  some  truth  is  certain 

*  Throughout  this  discussion  the  reader  is  supposed  to  be 
acquainted  with  the  doctrine  of  Chapter  xxiv. 


ULTIMATE   DOUBTS. 


539 


beyond  a  doubt,  and  that  the  rest — all  subordinate 
truth — is  subject  to  error  in  various  degrees.  Any 
finite  truth,  to  be  made  quite  true,  must  more  or  less 
be  modified ;  and  it  may  require  modification  to 
sucli  an  extent  that  we  must  call  it  utterly  trans- 
formed. Now,  in  Chapter  x.xiv.,  we  have  already 
shown  that  this  account  holds  good,  but  I  will  once 
more  insist  on  our  fallibility  in  finite  matters.  And 
the  general  consideration,  which  I  would  begin  by 
urging,  is  this.  With  every  finite  truth  there  is  an 
external  workl  of  unknown  extent.  Where  there  is 
such  an  indefinite  outside,  there  must  be  an  uncer- 
tain world  of  possible  conditions.  But  this  means 
that  any  finite  truth  may  be  conditioned  so  as  to  be 
made  really  quite  otiierwise.  I  will  go  on  brieHy  to 
apply  this. 

Wherever  a  truth  depends,  as  we  say,  upon  ob- 
servation, clearly  in  this  case  you  cannot  tell  how 
much  is  left  out,  and  what  you  have  not  observed 
may  be,  for  all  you  know,  the  larger  part  of  the 
matter.  But,  if  so,  your  truth — it  makes  no  differ- 
ence whether  it  is  called  "  particular  "  or  "general  " 
— may  be  indefinitely  mistaken.  The  accidental 
may  have  been  set  down  as  if  it  were  the  essence  : 
and  this  error  may  be  present  to  an  extent  which 
cannot  be  limited.  You  cannot  prove  that  subject 
and  predicate  have  not  been  conjoined  by  the  invisi- 
ble interjxosition  of  unknown  factors.  And  there  is 
no  way  in  which  this  possibility  can  be  excluded. 

But  the  chance  of  error  vanishes,  we  may  be  told, 
where  genuine  abstraction  is  possible.  It  is  not 
present  at  least,  for  example,  in  the  world  of  mathe- 
matical truth.  Such  an  objection  to  our  general 
view  cannot  stand.  Certainly  there  are  spheres 
where  abstraction  in  a  special  sense  is  possible,  and 
where  we  are  able,  as  we  may  say,  to  proceed  a 
priori.  And  for  other  purposes  this  difference,  i 
agree,  may  be  very  important ;  but  I  am  not  con- 
cerned here  with  its  importance  or  generally  with  its 


540  REALITY. 

nature  and  limits.  For,  as  regards  the  point  in 
question,  the  difference  is  wholly  irrelevant  No 
abstraction  (whatever  its  origin)  is  in  the  end  defen- 
sible. For  they  are,  none  of  them,  quite  true,  and 
with  each  the  amount  of  possible  error  must  remain 
unknown.  The  truth  asserted  is  not,  and  cannot 
be,  taken  as  real  by  itself.  The  background  is 
ignored  because  it  is  assumed  to  make  no  difference, 
and  the  mass  of  conditions,  abstracted  from  and  left 
out,  is  treated  as  immaterial.  The  predicate,  in 
other  words,  is  held  to  belong  to  the  subject  essen- 
tially, and  not  because  of  something  else  which  may 
be  withdrawn  or  modified.  But  an  assumption  of 
this  kind  obviously  goes  beyond  our  knowledge. 
Since  Reality  here  is  not  exhausted,  but  is  limited 
only  by  our  failure  to  see  more,  there  is  a  possibility 
everywhere  of  unknown  conditions  on  which  our 
judgment  depends.  And  hence,  after  all,  we  may 
be  asserting  anywhere  what  is  but  accidental. 

We  may  put  this  otherwise  by  stating  that  finite 
truth  must  be  conditional.  No  such  fact  or  truth  is 
ever  really  self-supported  and  independent  They 
are  all  conditioned,  and  in  the  end  conditioned  all 
by  the  unknown.  And  the  extent,  to  which  they 
are  so  conditioned,  again  is  uncertain.  But  this 
means  that  any  finite  truth  or  fact  may  to  an  indefin- 
ite extent  be  accidental  appearance.  In  other 
words,  if  its  conditions  were  filled  in,  it,  in  its  own 
i,J|'  proper  form,  might  have  disappeared.     It  might  be 

modified  and  transformed  beyond  that  point  at  which 
it  could  be  said,  to  any  extent,  to  retain  its  own 
nature.  And  however  improbable  in  certain  cases 
this  result  may  be,  in  no  case  can  it  be  called  im- 
possible absolutely.  Everything  finite  is  because  of 
something  else.  And  where  the  extent  and  nature 
of  this  "  something  else  "  cannot  be  ascertained,  the 
"  because "  turns  out  to  be  no  better  than  "  if." 
There  is  nothing  finite  which  is  not  at  the  mercy  of 
unknown  conditions. 


ULTIMATE   DOUBTS. 


54 « 


Finite  truth  and  fact,  we  may  say.  is  throughout 
"  hypothetical."  But,  either  with  this  term  or  with 
"  conditional,"  we  have  to  guard  against  misleading 
implications.  There  cannot  (from  our  present  point 
of  view)  be  one  finite  sphere,  which  is  real  and 
actual,  or  which  is  even  considered  to  be  so  for  a 
certain  purpose.  There  can  be  here  no  realm  of 
existence  or  fact,  outside  of  which  the  merely  sup- 
posed could  fall  in  unreality.  The  Reality,  on  one 
hand,  is  no  finite  existence ;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
every  predicate — no  matter  what — must  both  fall 
within  and  must  qualify  Reality.'  They  are  applic- 
able, all  subject  to  various  degrees  of  alteration,  and 
as  to  these  degrees  we,  in  the  end,  may  in  any  case 
be  mistaken.  In  any  case.  therL-fore,  the  alteration 
may  amount  to  unlimited  transformation.  This  is 
why  the  finite  must  be  called  conditional  rather  than 
conditioned.  For  a  thing  might  be  conditioned,  and 
yet,  because  of  its  conditions,  might  seem  to  stand 
unshaken  and  secure.  But  the  conditions  of  the 
finite,  we  have  seen,  are  otherwise.  They  in  any 
case  may  be  such  as  indefinitely  to  dissipate  its  par- 
ticular nature. 

Every  finite  truth  or  fact  to  some  extent  must  be 
unreal  and  false,  and  it  is  impossible  in  the  end  cer- 
tainly to  know  of  any  how  false  it  may  be.  We 
cannot  know  this,  because  the  unknown  extends 
inimitably,  and  all  abstraction  is  precarious  and  at 
the  mercy  of  what  is  not  observed.  If  our  know- 
ledge were  a  system,  the  case  would  then  undoubt- 
edly be  altered.  With  regard  to  everything  we 
should  then  know  the  place  assigned  to  it  by  the 
Whole,  and  we  could  measure  the  exact  degree  of 
truth  and  falsehood  which  anything  possessed. 
With  such  a  system  there  would  be  no  outlying 
region  of  ignorance ;  and  hence  of  all  its  contents 
we  could   have  a  complete  and  exhaustive  know- 


•  Cp.  here  Chupter  xxir. 


542  REALITY. 

ledge.      But  any  system  of  this  kind  seems,  most 
assuredly,  by  its  essence  impossible. 

There  are  certain  truths  about  the  Absolute,  which, 
for  the  present  at  least,'  we  can  regard  as  uncondi- 
tional. In  this  point  they  can  be  taken  to  differ  in 
kind  from  all  subordinate  truths,  for  with  the  latter 
it  is  a  question  only  of  more  or  less  fallibility.  They 
are  all  liable  to  a  possible  intellectual  correction,  and 
the  amount  of  this  possibility  cannot  be  certainly 
known.  Our  power  of  abstraction  varies  widely 
with  different  regions  of  knowledge,  but  no  finite 
truth  (however  reached)  can  be  considered  as  secure. 
Error  with  all  of  them  is  a  matter  of  probability,  and 
a  matter  of  degree.  And  those  are  relatively  true 
and  strong  which  more  nearly  approach  to  perfec- 
tion. 

It  is  this  perfection  which  is  our  measure.  Our 
criterion  is  individuality,  or  the  idea  of  complete 
system  ;  and  above,  in  Chapter  xxiv.,  we  have  al- 
ready explained  its  nature.  And  I  venture  to  think 
that  about  the  main  principle  there  is  no  great  diffic- 
ulty. Difficulty  is  felt  more  when  we  proceed  to 
apply  it  in  detail.  We  saw  that  the  principles  of 
internal  harmony  and  of  widest  extent  in  the  end 
are  the  same,  for  they  are  divergent  aspects  of  the 
one  idea  of  concrete  unity.  But  for  a  discussion  of 
such  points  the  reader  must  return  to  our  former 
w  i  chapter. 

t  A  thing  is  more  real  as  its  opposite  is  more  in- 

[  conceivable.     This  is  part  of  the  truth.    But,  on  the 

I'  other  hand,  the  opposite  is  more  inconceivable,  or 

more  impossible,  because  the  thing  itself  is  more  real 
and  more   probable   and  more  true     The  test  (I 
Ij,  would  repeat  it  once  more  here)  in  its  essence  is  posi- 

jji  tive.     The  stronger,  the  more  systematic  and  more 

fully  organised,  a  body  of  knowledge  becomes,  so 


*  For  a  further  statement  see  below. 


ULTIMATE    DOUBTS. 


543 


much  the  more  impossible  becomes  that  which  in 
any  point  conflicts  with  it.  Or,  from  the  other  side, 
we  may  resume  our  doctrine  thus.  The  q;reater  the 
amount  of  knovvledtje  which  an  idea  or  fact  would, 
directly  or  indirectly,  subvert,  so  much  the  more 
probably  is  it  false  and  im])ossibleand  inconceivable, 
And  there  may  be  finite  truths,  with  which  error 
— and  I  mean  by  error  here  liability  to  intellectual 
correction — is  most  improbable.  The  chance  may 
fairly  be  treated  as  too  sniall  to  be  worth  con- 
sidering.    Yet  after  all  it  exists. 

Finite  truths  are  all  conditional,  because  they  all 
must  depend  on  the  unknown.  But  this  unknown — 
the  reader  must  bear  in  mind — is  merely  relative. 
Itself  is  subordinate  to,  and  is  included  in,  our 
absolute  knowledj^e ;  and  its  nature,  in  general,  is 
certainly  not  unknown.  For,  if  it  is  anything  at 
all,  it  is  experience,  and  an  element  in  the  one 
Experience.  Our  ii);norance,  at  the  mercy  of  which 
all  the  finite  lies,  is  not  ignorance  absolute.  It 
covers  and  contains  more  than  we  are  able  to  know, 
but  this  "  more  "  is  known  beforehand  to  be  still  of 
the  self-same  sort.  And  we  must  now  pass  from 
the  special  consideration  of  finite  truth.' 

'  It  is  impossible  here  to  deal  fully  with  the  question  how,  in 
case  of  a  discrepancy,  we  are  able  to  correct  our  knowledge.  We 
are  force<l  imlcfinitcly  to  enlarge  experience,  because,  as  it  is, 
being  finite  it  cannot  be  harmonious.  Then  we  find  a  collision 
between  some  fact  or  idea,  on  the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  othrr 
hand,  some  body  of  recognised  truth.  Now  the  self-contradictory 
cannot  be  true  ;  and  the  question  is  how  to  rearrange  it  so  as  to 
n)ake  it  harmonious.  What  is  it  in  any  (jiven  case,  we  have  to 
ask,  which  has  to  be  sacrificed  ?  The  conflict  itself  may  perhaps 
be  apjjarent  only.  A  mere  accident  may  have  been  taken  for 
what  is  esseniial,  and,  with  the  correction  of  this  mistake,  the 
whole  collision  may  cease.  Or  the  fresh  idea  may  be  found  to 
be  untenable.  It  contains  an  error,  and  is  therefore  broken  up 
and  resolved  ;  or,  if  that  is  not  possible,  it  may  be  provisionally 
set  on  one  side  and  disregarded.  This  last  course  is  however 
feasible  only  if  we  assume  that  our  original  knowledge  is  so  strong 
as  to  stand  fast  and  unshaken.     But  the  opposite  of  this  may  be 

ZZH" 


544  REALITY. 

It  is  time  to  re-examine  a  distinction  which  we 
laid  down  above.  We  found  that  some  knowledge 
was  absolute,  and  that,  in  contrast  with  this,  all 
finite  truth  was  but  conditional.  But,  when  we  ex- 
amine it  more  closely,  this  difference  seems  hard  to 
maintain.  For  how  can  truth  be  true  absolutely,  if 
there  remains  a  gulf  between  itself  and  reality  ? 
Now  in  any  truth  about  Reality  the  word  "  about  " 
is  too  significant.  There  remains  always  something 
outside,  and  other  than,  the  predicate.  And,  be- 
cause of  this  which  is  outside,  the  predicate,  in  the 
end,  may  be  called  conditional.  In  brief,  the  differ- 
ence between  subject  and  predicate,  a  difference 
essential  to  truth,  is  not  accounted  for.'  It  depends 
on  something  not  included  within  the  judgment  it- 
self, an  element  outlying  and,  therefore,  in  a  sense 
unknown.  The  type  and  the  essence,  in  other 
words,  can  never  reach  the  reality.  The  essence 
realized,  we  may  say,  is  too  much  to  be  truth,  and, 
unrealized  and  abstract,  it  is  assuredly  too  little  to 
be  real.  Even  absolute  truth  in  the  end  seems  thus 
to  turn  out  erroneous. 

And  it  must  be  admitted  that,  in  the  end,  no  pos- 
sible truth  is  quite  true.  It  is  a  partial  and  inade- 
quate translation  of  that  which  it  professes  to  give 
bodily.      And    this    internal    discrepancy  belongs 

to  give  way,  and  roust  be  modified  and  over-ruled  by  the  fresh 
experience.  But,  last  of  all,  there  is  a  further  possibility  which 
remains.  Neither  of  our  conflicting  pieces  of  knowledge  may  be 
able  to  stand  as  true.  Each  may  be  true  enough  to  satisfy  and  to 
serve,  for  some  purposes,  and  at  a  certain  level ;  and  yet  both, 
viewed  from  above,  can  be  seen  to  be  conflicting  errors.  Both 
must  therefore  be  resolved  to  the  point  required,  and  must  be  re- 
arranged as  elements  in  a  wider  whole.  Separation  of  the  acci- 
dents from  the  essence  must  here  be  carried  on  until  the  essence 
itself  is  more  or  less  dissolved.  I  have  no  space  to  explain,  or 
to  attempt  to  illustrate,  this  general  statement 

*  The  essential  inconsistency  of  truth  may,  perhaps,  be  best  stated 
thus.  If  there  is  any  difference  between  w/ta/  it  means  and  what 
it  stands  for,  then  truth  is  clearly  not  realized.  But,  if  there  is  no 
such  difference,  then  truth  has  ceased  to  exist. 


ULTIMATE   DOUBTS. 


545 


irremoveably  to  truth's  proper  character.  Still  the 
difference,  drawn  between  absolute  and  finite  truth, 
must  none  the  less  be  upheld.  For  the  former,  in  a 
word,  is  not  intellectually  corrigible.  There  is  no 
intellectual  alteration  which  could  possibly,  as  general 
truth,  bring  it  nearer  to  ultimate  Reality.  VVe  have 
seen  that  any  suggestion  of  this  kind  is  but  self- 
destructive,  that  any  doubt  on  this  point  is  literally 
senseless.  Absolute  truth  is  corrected  only  by  pass- 
ing outside  the  intellect.  It  is  modified  only  by 
taking  in  the  remaining  aspects  of  experience.  But 
in  this  passage  the  proper  nature  of  truth  is,  of 
course,  transformed  and  perishes. 

Any  finite  truth,  on  the  other  side,  remains  sub- 
ject to  intellectual  correction.  It  is  incomplete  not 
merely  as  being  confined  by  its  general  nature,  as 
truth,  within  one  partial  aspect  of  the  Whole.  It  is 
incomplete  as  having  within  its  own  intellectual 
world  a  space  falling  outside  it.  There  is  truth, 
actual  or  possible,  which  is  over  against  it,  and 
which  can  stand  outside  it  as  an  Other.  But  with 
absolute  truth  there  is  no  intellectual  outside. 
There  is  no  competing  predicate  which  could  con- 
ceivably qualify  its  subject,  and  which  could  come 
in  to  condition  and  to  limit  its  assertion.  Absolute 
knowledge  may  be  conditional,  if  you  please  ;  but 
its  condition  is  not  any  other  truth,  whether  actual  or 
possible. 

The  doctrine,  which  I  am  endeavouring  to  state, 
is  really  simple.  Truth  is  one  aspect  of  experience, 
and  is  therefore  made  imperfect  and  limited  by  what 
it  fails  to  include.  So  far  as  it  is  absolute,  it  does 
however  give  the  general  type  and  character  of  all 
that  possibly  can  be  true  or  real.  ;  And  the  universe 
in  this  general  character  is  known  completely.  It 
is  not  known,  and  it  never  can  be  known,  in  all 
its  details.  It  is  not  known,  and  it  never,  as  ;. 
whole,  can  be  known,  in  such  a  sense  that  know- 
ledge would  be  the  same  as  experience  or  reality 

A.  R.  N   N 


546  REALITY. 

For  knowledge  and  truth — if  we  suppose  them 
to  possess  that  identity — would  have  been,  there- 
with, absorbed  and  transmuted.  But  on  the  other 
hand  the  universe  does  not  exist,  and  it  cannot 
possibly  exist,  as  truth  or  knowledge,  in  such  a 
way  as  not  to  be  contained  and  included  in  the 
truth  we  call  absolute.  For,  to  repeat  it  once 
more,  such  a  possibility  is  self-destructive.  We  may 
perhaps  say  that,  i(/>er  impossibile  this  could  be  pos- 
sible, we  at  least  could  not  possibly  entertain  the 
idea  of  it.  For  such  an  idea,  in  being  entertained, 
vanishes  into  its  opposite  or  into  nonsense.  Absol- 
ute truth  is  error  only  if  you  expect  from  it  more 
that  mere  general  knowledge.  It  is  abstract,'  and 
fails  to  supply  its  own  subordinate  details.  It  is 
one-sided,  and  cannot  give  bodily  all  sides  of  the 
Whole.  But  on  the  other  side  nothing,  so  far  as  it 
goes,  can  fall  outside  it  It  is  utterly  all-inclusive 
and  contains  beforehand  all  that  could  ever  be  set 
against  it.  For  nothing  can  be  set  against  it,  which 
does  not  become  intellectual,  and  itself  enter  as  a 
vassal  into  the  kingdom  of  truth.  Thus,  even  when 
you  go  beyond  it,  you  can  never  advance  outside  it. 
When  you  take  in  more,  you  are  condemned  to  take 
in  more  of  the  selfsame  sort  The  universe,  as 
truth,  in  other  words  preserves  one  character,  and 
of  that  character  we  possess  infallible  knowledge. 

And,  if  we  view  the  matter  from  another  side, 
there  is  no  opposition  between  Reality  and  truth. 
Reality,  to  be  complete,  must  take  in  and  absorb 
this  partial  aspect  of  itself.     And  truth  itself  would 

1  It  is  not  abstract  in  the  way  in  which  we  have  seen  that  all 
finite  truth  is  abstract.  That  was  precarious  intellectually,  since, 
more  or  less,  it  left  other  truth  outside  and  over  against  it.  It 
was  thus  always  one  piece  among  other  pieces  of  the  world  of 
truth.  It  could  be  added  to,  intellectually,  so  as  to  be  trans- 
formed. Absolute  truth,  on  the  other  hand,  cannot  be  altered 
by  the  addition  of  any  truth.  There  is  no  possible  truth  which 
does  not  fall  under  it  as  one  of  its  own  details.  Unless  you  pre- 
suppose it,  in  short,  no  other  truth  remains  truth  at  alL 


ULTIMATE   DOUBTS 


not  be  complete,  until  it  took  in  and  included  all 
aspects  of  the  universe.  Thus,  in  passing  beyond 
itself  and  in  abolishing  the  difference  between  its 
subject  and  predicate,  it  does  but  carry  out  the 
demands  of  its  proper  nature.  But  I  may  perhaps 
hope  that  this  conclusion  has  been  sufficiently 
secured  (Chapters  xv..  xxiv.,  xxvi,).  To  repeat — in 
its  general  character  Reality  is  present  in  knowledge 
and  truth,  that  absolute  truth  which  is  distinguished 
and  brought  out  by  metaphysics.  But  this  general 
character  of  Reality  is  not  Reality  itself,  and  again  it 
is  not  more  than  the  general  character  even  of  truth 
and  knowledge.  Still,  so  far  as  there  is  any  truth 
and  any  knowledge  at  all,  this  character  is  absolute. 
Truth  is  conditional,  but  it  cannot  be  intellectually 
transcended.  To  fill  in  its  conditions  would  be  to 
pass  into  a  whole  beyond  mere  intellect. 

The  conclusion  which  we  have  reached,  I   trust, 
the  outcome  of  no  mere  compromise,  makes  a  claim 
to  reconcile  extremes.     Whether  it  is  to  be  called 
Realism  or  Idealism  I  do  not  know,  and  I  have  not 
cared  to  enquire.      It  neither  puts  ideas  and  thought 
first,  nor  again  does  it  permit  us  to  assert  that  any- 
thing   else    by  itself  is    more    real.      Truth   is  the 
whole  world   in  one  aspect,  an  aspect  supreme  in 
philosophy,  and  yet  even   in   philosophy  conscious 
of   its    own    incompleteness.     So  far  again  as  our 
conclusion  has  claimed  infallibility,  it  has  come,   I 
think,  into  no  collision  with  the  better  kind  of  com- 
mon sense.     That  metaphysics  should  approve  itself 
to  common  sense  is  indeed  out  of  the  question.    For 
neither  in  its  processes  nor  in  its  results  can  it  ex- 
pect, or  even  hope,  to  be  generally  intellii^ible.     But 
it  is  no  light  thing,  except  for  the  thoughtless,  to 
advocate   metaphysical  results,  which,  if  they  were 
understood   by   common   sense,    would  at  once  be 
rejected.     1  do  not  mean  that  on  subordinate  points, 
such  as  the  personality  of  the  Deity  or  or  a  continu- 


548 


REALITY. 


ance  of  the  individual  after  death — points  on  which 
there  is   not  any  general   consent    in  the    world — 
philosophy  is  bound  to  adopt  one  particular  view.     I 
mean  that  to  arrange  the  elements  of  our  nature  in 
such  a  way  that  the  system  made,  when  understood, 
strikes  the  mind  as  one-sided,  is  enough  of  itself 
to  inspire  hesitation  and  doubt     On  this  head  at 
least,  our  main  result  is,  I  hope,  satisfactory.     The 
absolute  knowledge,    that  we  have  claimed,  is  no 
more  than  an  outline.      It  is  knowledge  which  seems 
sufficient,  on  one  side,  to  secure  the  chief  interests  of 
our  nature,  and  it  abstains,  on  the  other  side,  from 
pretensions  which  all  must  feel  are  not  human.     We 
insist  that  all  Reality  must  keep  a  certain  character. 
The  whole  of  its  contents  must  be  experience,  they 
must   come   together   into  one    system,    and     this 
unity    itself  must  be  experience.      It  must  include 
and   must    harmonize  every    possible  fragment   of* 
appearance.       Anything,   which   in    any  sense    can! 
be  more  than  and  beyond  what  we  possess,  must 
stiil    inevitably    be    more    of    the   self-same    kind. 
We  persist  in  this  conclusion,  and    we  urge  that, 
so  far  as  it  goes,    it    amounts    to   absolute    know- 
ledge.     But  this    conclusion  on  the  other  side,   I 
have  pointed  out,  does  not  go  very  far.     It  leaves 
us  free  to  admit  that  what  we  know  is,   after  all. 
nothing  in  proportion  to  the  world  of  our  ignorance. 
We  do  not  know  what  other  modes  of  experience 
may  exist,  or,  in  comparison  with  ours,   how  many  J 
they  may  be.      We  do  not  know,  except  in  vague" 
outline,   what  the  Unity  is,  or,  at  all,  why  it  appears 
in  our  particular  forms  of  plurality.     We  can  even 
understand  that  such  knowledge  is  impossible,  and 
we  have  found  the  reason  why  it  is  so.     For  truth 
can  know  only,  we  may  say,  so  far  as  itself  is.     And 
the  union  of  all  sides  of  our  nature  would  not  leave 
them,  in  any  case,  as  they  are.     Truth,  when  made 
adequate  to  Reality,  would  be  so  supplemented  as 
to  have  become  something  else — something  other. 


ULTIMATE    DOUBTS. 


549 


than  truth,  and  something  for  us  unattainable.  We 
have  thus  left  due  space  for  the  exercise  of  doubt 
and  wonder.  We  admit  the  healthy  scepticism  for 
which  all  knowledge  in  a  sense  is  vanity,  which 
feels  in  its  heart  that  science  is  a  poor  thing  if 
measured  by  the  wealth  of  the  real  universe.  We 
justify  the  natural  wonder  which  delights  to  stray 
beyond  our  daylight  world,  and  to  follow  paths  that 
lead  into  half- known  half  unknowable  regions. 
Our  conclusion,  in  brief,  has  explained  and  has  con- 
firmed the  irresistible  impression  that  all  is  beyond 
us. 

Everything  is  error,  but  everything  is  not  illusion. 
It  is  error  where,  and  in  so  far  as,  our  ideas  are  not 
the  same  as  reality.  It  is  illusion  where,  and  in  so  far 
as,  this  difference  turns  to  a  conflict  in  our  nature. 
Where  experience,  inward  or  outward,  clashes  with 
our  views,  where  there  arises  thus  disorder  confusion 
and  pain,  we  may  speak  of  illusion.  It  is  the  course 
of  events  in  collision  with  the  set  of  our  ideas. 
Now  error,  in  the  sense  of  one-sided  and  partial 
truth,  is  necessary  to  our  being.  Indeed  nothing 
else,  so  to  speak,  could  be  relative  to  our  needs, 
nothing  else  could  answer  the  purpose  of  truth. 
And,  to  suit  the  divergent  aspects  of  our  inconsis- 
tent finite  lives,  a  variety  of  error  in  the  shape  of 
diverse  partial  truths  is  required.  And,  if  things 
could  be  otherwise,  then,  so  far  as  we  see,  finite 
life  would  be  impossible.  Therefore  we  must  have 
error  present  always,  and  this  presence  entails  some 
amount  of  illusion.  Finite  beings,  themselves  not 
self-consistent,  have  to  realize  their  various  aspects 
in  the  chance-world  of  temporal  events.  And 
hence  ideas  and  existence  cannot  precisely  corres- 
pond, while  the  want  of  this  correspondence  must 
to  some  extent  mean  illusion.  There  are  finite 
souls,  we  must  admit  sadly,  to  whom,  on  the  whole, 
life  has  proved  a  disappointment  and  cheat  There 
is  perhaps  no  one  to  whom,  at  certain  moments  and 


550  REALITY. 

in  some  respect,  this  conclusion  has  not  come  home. 
But  that,  in  general  and  in  the  main,  life  is  illusory 
cannot  be  rationally  maintained.     And  if,  in  general 
and  in  the  rough,  our  ideas  are  answered  by  events, 
that  is  all  surely  which,  as  finite  beings,  we  have  a 
right  to  expect.     We  must  answer  then,  that,  though 
illusions  exist  here  and  there,  the  whole  is  not  an 
illusion.     We  are  not  concerned  to  gain  an  absolute 
experience   which   for   us,   emphatically,    could  be 
nothing.     We  want  to  know,  in  effect,  whether  the 
'1     universe  is  concealed  behind  appearances,  and    is 
making  a  sport  of  us.     What  we  find  here  truer  and 
more    beautiful  and  better  and  higher — are  these 
things  really  so,  or  in  reality  may  they  be  all  quite 
otherwise  ?     Our  standard,  in  other  words,  is  it  a 
false  appearance  not  owned  by  the  universe  ?     And 
f  to  this,   in  general,  we  may  make  an  unhesitating 
.  reply.     There  is  no  reality  at  all  anywhere  except 
'  in  appearance,  and  in  our  appearance  we  can  dis- 
.  cover  the  main   nature  of  reality.      This   nature 
j  cannot  be  exhausted,  but  it  can  be  known  in  ab- 
»  stract.     And  it  is,  really  and  indeed,  this  general 
character  of  the   very   universe   itself  which    dis- 
tinguishes for  us  the  relative  worth  of  appearances. 
We  make  mistakes,  but  still  we  use  the  essential 
nature  of  the  world  as  our  own  criterion  of  value 
and  reality.     Higher,  truer,  more  beautiful,  better 
and  more  real — these,  on  the  whole,  count  in  the 
universe  as  they  count  for  us.     And  existence,  on 
the  whole,  must  correspond  with  our  ideas.     For, 
on  the  whole,  higher  means  for  us  a  greater  amount 
of  that  one  Reality,  outside  of  which  all  appearance 
is  absolutely  nothing. 

It  costs  little  to  find  that  in  the  end  Reality  is 
inscrutable.  It  is  easy  to  perceive  that  any  appear- 
ance, not  being  the  Reality,  in  a  sense  is  fallacious. 
These  truths,  such  as  they  are,  are  within  the  reach 
of  any  and  every  man.     It  is  a  simple  matter  to 


ULTIMATE    DOUBTS. 


55' 


conclude  further,  perhaps,  that  the  Real  sits  apart, 
that  it  keeps  state  by  itself  and  does  not  descend 
into  phenomena.  Or  it  is  as  cheap,  again,  to  take 
lip  anotlier  side  of  the  same  error.  The  Reality  is 
viewed  perhaps  as  immanent  in  all  its  appearances, 
in  such  a  way  that  it  is,  alike  and  equally,  present  in 
all.  Everything  is  so  worthless  on  one  hand,  so 
divine  on  the  other,  that  nothing  can  be  viler  or  can 
be  more  sublime  than  anything  else.  It  is  against 
both  sides  of  this  mistake,  it  is  against  this  empty 
transcendence  and  this  shallow  Pantheism,  that  our 
pages  may  be  called  one  sustained  polemic.  The 
positive  relation  of  every  appearance  as  an  adjective 
to  Reality,  and  the  presence  of  Reality  among  its 
appearances  in  different  degrees  and  with  diverse 
values — this  double  truth  we  have  found  to  be  the 
centre  of  philosophy.  It  is  because  the  Absolute  is 
no  sundered  abstraction  but  has  a  positive  character, 
it  is  because  this  Absolute  itself  is  positively  present 
in  all  appearance,  that  a(3pearances  themselves  can 
possess  true  differences  of  value.  And.  apart  from 
this  foundation,  in  the  end  we  are  left  without  a  solid 
criterion  of  worth  or  of  truth  or  reality.  This  con- 
clusion— the  necessity  on  one  side  for  a  standard, 
and  the  impossibility  of  reaching  it  without  a  positive 
knowledge  of  the  Absolute — I  would  venture  to 
press  upon  any  intelligent  worshipper  of  the  Un- 
known. 

The  Reality  itself  is  nothing  at  all  apart  from 
appearances.'  It  is  in  the  end  nonsense  to  talk  of 
realities — or  of  anything  else — to  which  appearances 
could  appear,  or  between  which  they  somehow 
could  hang  as  relations.  Such  realities  (we  have 
seen)  would  themselves  be  appearances  or  nothing. 
For  there  is  no  way  of  qualifying  the  Real  except 
by  appearances,  and  outside  the  Real  there  remains 
no  space  in  which  appearances  could  live.      Reality 


For  the  meaning  of  appearance  see,  in  p>articu1ar,  Chapter 


XXVI. 


552  REALITY. 

appears  in  its  appearances,  and  they  are  its  revela- 
tion ;  and  otherwise  they  also  could  be  nothing 
whatever.  The  Reality  comes  into  knowledge,  and. 
the  more  we  know  of  anything,  the  more  in  one 
way  is  Reality  present  within  us.  The  Reality  is 
our  criterion  of  worse  and  better,  of  ugliness  and 
beauty,  of  true  and  false,  and  of  real  and  unreal. 
It  in  brief  decides  between,  and  gives  a  general 
meaning  to,  higher  and  lower.  It  is  because  of  this 
criterion  that  appearances  differ  in  worth;  and,  with- 
out it,  lowest  and  highest  would,  for  all  we  know, 
count  the  same  in  the  universe.  And  Reality  is 
one  Experience,  self-pervading  and  superior  to  mere 
relations.  Its  character  is  the  opposite  of  that 
fabled  extreme  which  is  barely  mechanical,  and  it  is, 
in  the  end,  the  sole  perfect  realisation  of  spirit.  We 
Jimay  fairly  close  this  work  then  by  insisting  that 
'Reality  is  spiritual.  There  is  a  great  saying  of 
Hegel's,  a  saying  too  well  known,  and  one  which 
without  some  explanation  I  should  not  like  to  en- 
dorse. But  I  will  end  with  something  not  very 
different,  something  perhaps  more  certainly  the 
!  essential  message  of  Hegel.  Outside  of  spirit  there  j 
is  not,  and  there  cannot  be,  any  reality,  and,  the  ■' 
more  that  anything  is  spiritual,  so  much  the  more 
is  it  veritably  real. 


^^^^H                    ^^^^^^1 

^m           The  reader  who  finds  this  collection  of  references  useless,  as                   ^^| 

^M       well  as  faulty  and  incomplete, 

is  requested  to  treat  it  as  non-                    ^^H 

^M       existent. 

^H 

^M       Absolute,  and  pleasure  and  pain. 

Appearance,  degrees  of  reality                    ^^H 

^B               See  Pleasure. 

in,  chap,  xxiv.,  457,  487.                        ^^B 

^1       —  contents  of,  144  foil. 

—  the  highest  is  incapable  of,                          1 

^M      —  contains  and  harmonizes  all 

376,  382,  499-                                          ^M 

^H              aspects,  172,  182,  195,204, 

—  must  qualify  Reality,  1 3 1-2,                     ^^M 

^B              411-12,  487,  chap.  xxvi. 

204,  456,  486  foil.,  551.                          ^^ 

^H      —  how  far  good,  488-9. 

—  nature  of,  163,  187,  455  foil.,                           1 

^H      —  knowledge  of,  159  foil. 

485-6.                                                           I 

^H       —  knowledge,  536  foil. 

—  not  explained  away,  204.                           ^^B 

^H      —  main  aspects  of,  irreducible, 

Approval,  403-4,  407-8,  431.                         ^H 

^H              457  foil.  Cf.  Inexplicable. 

Association,   209,   347,   355-6,                    ^^M 

^H       —  not  itself  without  me,  260. 

479                                                         ^^1 

^H  •    —  not  same  as  God,  448. 

Atoms,  72,  364,  375.                                     ^* 

^H     —  not  sum  of  things,  486  foil. 

Axioms,  151-2,  484.                                           ■ 

^"       —  perfection  of.      See  Perfec- 

^                                                               ■ 

tion. 

Beauty,  437, 463  foil.,  473.  490.                           1 

—  unity  of,  140  foil.,  468  foil., 

Being,  mere,  130,  225,  243.                                   ■ 

1^               519  foil. 

Body,    an    ideal    construction,                    M 

^K       Abstract,    Abstraction,    17-18, 

^^1 

^B               67,  145,  249-50.  259.  267, 

—  and  secondary  qualities,  268,                  .^^H 

^m         283, 304,  334, 336-9,  370, 

^H 

^V              420.  445.  459-  493.  495-6. 

—  and  soul,  chap,  xxiii.                               ^^H 

■              527.  539  foil- 

—  a  what,  297.                                              ^^H 

^H      Activity    (Cf.    Energy,    Force, 

—  mere,  337-9.                                             ^H 

^U              Resistance,    Will),    chap. 

—  my,  continuity  of,  3 1 1.                               ^^H 

H              vii.,  483. 

—  my,  percejition  of,  263-4.                         ^^H 

^H      —  perception  of,  96-100,  116. 

— ^  not  potentially  the  soul,  314.                      ^^H 

^m      Adjective,  must  make  a  diflfer- 

^^H 

■              ence,  327,  329. 

Causation   cannot   be   demon-                    ^^H 

^H      Appearance,  all  must  appear  in 

strated,  325-6.                                           ^^H 

■               time,   234,   259,  319,  382, 

—  law  of,  54,  293,  328.       [58.                           M 

H 

Cause  and    Effect,  identity  of,                ^^^^| 

^B      —  and  illusion,  401,  448,  487, 

—  and    Effect,   reciprocity  of,               ^^^^| 

■             549- 

329.                                     ^H 

I 

^^M 

554 


INDEX. 


Cause  implies  abstnurtion  from 
background,  57,  67,  218, 
3»6,  336,  338,  386. 

—  is    inconsistent,     chap,   vi., 

218-20. 
Chance,  234,  237-40,  294,  387 
foil. 

—  self,  loi. 
Change  is  ideal,  t66. 

—  is     inconsistent,    chap,    v., 

207,  219. 

—  perception  of.     See  Succes-  1 

sion. 

—  permanent  in,  45,  207. 
Comparison,  113. 
Compatible,  390-1. 
Condition,  66,  313-4. 3»5i  336- 
Conditions  complete,  not  Keal- 

"y.  383.  388.  397- 

—  sum  of,  66,  313,  336.  • 
Conditional,  See  Potential. 

—  and  conditioned,  540-1. 
Consciousness.     See    Feeling 

Self-consciousness. 

Content,  162  foil,  225,  230 
foil.,  233  foil.,  305  foil, 
456,  460.  Cf.  Event,  Ex- 
istence, Ideal,  Finite. 

Continuity,  chap,  iv.,  319. 

—  and  existence,  309  foil. 

—  and  velocity,  42. 
Contradiction,  how  got  rid  of^ 

192. 

Contrary,  22. 

Criterion  (cf.  Standard),  2, 136, 
188-91,  363  foil,  374, 
4II-I2,  537  foil,  551-2. 

—  theoreiical  and  practical,  147 

foil 
Degrees  of  a  fact,  what,  376. 

—  of  goodness,  chap.  xxv. 

—  of  truth  and  reality,  chap. 

xxiv.,  411,  487. 
Desert,  432-3. 
Desirable,  408  9. 
Desire,  402-10,  478. 
Development.     See  Potential. 

—  and  Validity,  137. 


Difference.        See       IdentitT. 

QualitT,  Relation. 
Direction  of  time;  214  foil 
Discord  and  pain,  157  folL 

—  theoretical     and     practical, 

155  foil 

—  nnfek,  365,  375. 
Discretion.     See  Continuitr. 
Dispositions,     psychical     312, 

356,  383- 
Disdnction  and  Thought,  477 

foil 
Doubt,  ultimate,  z,   136,  514, 

and  cf  Criterion. 

End  The,  every  aspect  may  be 

taken  as,  405, 456. 
Ends,  413. 

—  collision  of,  430. 

—  in  Nature,  200,  496-7. 

—  failure  of,  200-1. 
Energy,  conservation  of,  331. 

—  potential  63.  332. 

Error,  chapters  xvi.,  xxiv.,  xxvL, 
xxvii.  And  see  Truth, 
Appearance. 

—  sheer,  365,  391. 
Event,  317. 

—  everything  psychical  is,  5 1-2, 

«59.  298,  30'-2.  317  foil, 
398. 

—  how  estimated,  370,  376. 
Evil     See  Good. 
Evolution.     Sfc  Potential,  Pro- 
gress, Development 

Existence,  317,  73,  97,  162  foil., 
259,298-9,301,  309,315. 
400,  499. 

—  degree  of  truth  in,  370,  377 

foil 
Experience  and  reality,  144. 

—  appeal  to,  113,  206. 

—  as  only  my  states,  chap.  xxi. 

—  direct  and  indirect,  ibid. 

—  in  a  sense  all  is  my,  260, 

300  fbU,  523  foil 

—  main  aspects  of,  458  foil 

—  outer  and  inner,  346. 


^^^^^^^^^^^iND^^^^^^^^^555          ^^U 

Explanation,   184-5,  ^05,  2j6, 

Ideal,  64,  72,  98,  106, 163,  166,                  ^H 

'                      295.  336,    469   foil.,  475. 

»34.  236-40,  300-3.  319-                  ^H 

482,  491,  496. 

23,  350  foil.,  364,  472,  479,                  ^H 

Extension.     See  Space. 

490.                                                           1 

—  of  Nature,  267. 

Ideality — see   Finite    and    Re-                     ^J 

1             Fact,  what,  317.  See  Existence, 

lativity.                                                   ^^f 
Identity,  48-5  2,  7  2-4,  124,281,                    ^M 

Event 

3'o,  5^3,  3'9-23.  344-5,                   ^H 

Facts,  357,  448  foil. 

347  foil-,  353  ••>11-                                 ^M 

I;aith,  443- 

—  and  similarity,  348.                                 ^^M 

Fallibility,  universal,  512. 

—  of     soul    and    body,     323,                   ^^H 

Feeling,  80,  92-3,   104-7,  '^o, 

■ 

1                      222     foil.,     244,     249-52, 
1                     300-^.  346,  459,  464.  473. 

—  personal,  81-6,  1 1 2-13,  256,                   ^^M 

313. 319-                               ^H 

479.  520  '""• 

—  prmciple  of,   73,   208,    255,                  ^H 

—  as  criterion,  373-4. 

328,  347  foil.                                         ^H 

Fictions,  working,   18,  61,  126, 

Ignorance.         See      Privation,                   ^^H 

267,  284-5,  332-  490  f"!'-. 

Negation.                                               ^^| 

496.      And    see   Abstrac- 
tion. 

Illusion.     See  Appearance.                           ^^| 

Imaginary  and   real,   212  foil.,                   ^^| 

Finite   centres   of  Experience, 

286  foil.,  366  foil.                                  ^H 

226,  342-3,  346,  464.  469, 
537.     Cf.  Souls. 
—  ideality   of    the,    106,    166, 

Impossible,  391,  503  foil.,   537                   ^H 

^H 

Inconceivable.    See  Impossible.                    ^^H 

228,    236    foil.,   246,   25t, 

Individual,  only  one,  246.                            ^^H 

\                    291-2,  350,  364,  417-18, 
448,  456,  460,  486,  525. 

Individualistic  attitude,  309.                          ^^H 

Individuality,     149,    177,    225,                   ^^M 

Force,   282,    284-5,   483-     C(. 

243  foil.,  371,  497-9,  542.                    ^M 

Activity,    Energy,    Resist- 

Inexplicable, 336,  468-70,  482.                   ^H 

ance. 

511,517,537.                                       ^M 

Form.     See  Relational. 

Infinity  of  Nature,  176.                                  ^^H 

Formal  Act,  435-6. 

—  of    presented    subject,    290                         1 

^J 

■         Good,  and  desire,  402  foil.,  409. 

Inherence,  19  foil.                                        ^^H 

■          —  and  evil,  chapters  xvii.,  xxv. 

Inorganic,  270  foil.                                   ^^^^| 

—  degrees  of,  401,  412,  440-2. 

Intelligible,  all  is,  171,  174,  176,             ^^^^H 

—  inconsistent,  409  foil. 

231,  482.                                          ^^M 

Goodness    and    truth,    402-3. 

^^M 

467. 

Judgment,  163  foil,  231-2,  361                   ^H 

—  moral,  413  foil. 

^H 

Habit,  what,  355. 

^^H 

Hedonism,    374,    405-7,    409, 

Knowledge,  ambiguous,  159.                       ^^^ 

425.  434- 

—  absolute  and  conditional,  535                   ^^M 

Humanity,  529, 

^^H 

Idea  and  its  own  existence,  169, 

—  perfect,  5 1 7.                                        i^^l 

3°'.  398- 

^^^H 

—  is  what  it  means,  51,  398. 

I-aws,  124,  208,  339,  35 1,  354-                 ^H 

—  not  explicit,  98. 

I 

5.  37o>  499-                                     .^^1 

556 


INDEX. 


Matter,  285,  288  foil.,  338, 493. 

Cf.  Nature. 
Memory,  83,  113,  213,  256-7, 

356- 
Metaphysics,  Introduction,  453- 

5.  489.  496-8. 
Mine.     See  This. 
Monads,   30,    86-7,   117,   141, 

316. 
Morality,    150-4,    201-2,    413 

foil.,  431  foil. 

—  origin  of,  431. 

Motion  is  inconsistent.  Chap, 
v.,  349.  354- 

Nature,  chap,  xxii.,   490   foil., 

530. 

—  an  abstraction,   267,  337-8, 

490-3.  530- 

—  and  laws,  354. 

—  and    mechanism,    353,  496 

foil. 

—  as  force,  282. 

—  ends  in,  200,  496-7. 

—  extension  of,  267. 

—  identity  of,  281. 

—  infinite,  290  foil. 

—  is  it  beautiful,  etc.  ?  490  foil. 

—  mere,  not  original,  261. 

—  order  of,  292,  344,  470. 

—  philosophy  of,  496  foil. 

—  uniformity  of,  292-3,    344, 

470. 

—  unity  of,  286  foil.,  367  foil. 

—  unperceived,    273  foil.,  311, 

384- 

Necessity.  See  Chance,  Possi- 
bility, Impossibility. 

Negation  and  privation,  97- 
100,  240.    See  Privation. 

—  implies  unity,  228. 

—  in  a  definition,  424,  427. 

—  mere,  138,  243. 

Now.  See  Time,  Succession, 
or  Appearance,  Event,This. 

Occasion,  65,  326.  [400. 

Ontological  Proof,  149-50,394- 


Organism,  270.     Cf.  Body. 
Origin,  irrelevant,  35,  6a,  206- 

7,  221,  254. 
Other  to  thought,  175  foIL 

Pain  and  Pleasure,  and  the 
Absolute,  157,  198-aoo, 
244,  458  foil.,  533-5. 

—  and  desire,  405. 

—  and  self,  407. 
Passivity.    See  Activity. 
Perfection,  147,  243,  363,  402, 

409,  421,  468,   487,  508, 

54*. 

—  and  quantity,  200,  245. 

—  only  one  thing  has,  246. 

—  theoretical  and  practical,  147 

foil.,  373  foil. 

—  two  aspects  of,  363  foil.,  411, 

414  foil. 
Personality,   173,    531-3.     Cf. 

Self. 
Pleasure.    See  Pain. 
Pleasant  and  good,  403  foil. 
Possible   and    Possibility,  142, 

US.   »57.  196,  3".  325. 

341,    387    foil.,  503  foil., 
512  foil. 

—  degrees    of,    394,  5^3  fo"-. 

539  foil. 
Postulate,  150,  484. 
Potential,  382  foil.,  53,  63,  277, 

311  foil.,  332. 
Predication,  20.    Cf.  Judgment 
Present.    See  Time,  Succession. 
Principles  cannot,  as  such,  exist, 

377  foil. 

—  working,  302,  306. 
Privation,  191,  240,  390-1,  515 

foil.,  538.     And  cf.  Nega- 
Probability,  504  foil.  [tion. 

Progress,  497,  499  Ml,  508. 
Psychology,  317  foil.,  339.354- 

S- 

—  and  Metaphysics,  76,  113. 

Quality  and  extension,  289, 
chap.  iii. 


^^^^^^^^B                                                                                                                  ^H 

^H         Quality  and  relation,    17,   142, 

Self,  my  past   and  future,   256                ^^| 

^H                 344.    Cf.  Relation. 

524.                                            ^H 

^H         Qualities  primary  and  second- 

—  new  might  be  made,  85,  503,                ^^M 

^H                 ary,    chap,    i.,    362,  326, 

—  reality  of,  chap,  x.,  316.                         ^^H 

H          331. 490-3- 

—  unity  of,  368.                                           ^^H 

^B         —  sensible,  same  for  all  ?  .144. 

Self-consciousness,  90,  107-13,                ^^M 

173-4.  203,  232,  348  foil.,                ^H 

^B         Real.     See  Imaginary. 

441,447)  522.                                     ^H 

^H         Reality  and  appearances,    4S6 

Self-sacrifice  aud  self-assertion,               ^H 

^H                 foil.     See  Appearance. 

414  foil.                                               ^^H 

^m         —  and  being,  225,  243,  45S-6- 

Self-VVill,  229.                                            ^M 

^H          —  and  originality.     See  Origin. 

Sense  as  criterion,  189-90,  225,                ^^M 

^H         —  and  thought     See  Thought. 

chap.  xxiv.                                             ^^H 

^H         ^  =  experience, ! 44-7, 455  foil. 

Series,  229,  235,  316.                                 ^H 

^H         —  is    self-consistent,    13,   456. 

Solidity,  288-90.                                        ^H 

^M                 Cf.  Criterion. 

Solipsism,  chap,  .xxi.,  145,  523                ^^M 

^m         —  must    appear,    131-2,    234, 

foil.     Cf.  Experience.                         ^^M 

^1                 382,  400. 

Soul  and  souls,  a  ivhai,  398  foil,                 ^^H 

^H          Relational  form,    33,    47,     170 

—  an  ideal    construciioti,   306,                 ^^M 

■                  foil.,   180  foil.,   193,    499, 

315.524:                                                ^1 

^H                   521-2. 

—  and  experience,  300,  304.                          M 

^H         Relations    are    all    intrinsical. 

—  and  finite  centres,  236,  539.                   ^^^M 

^B                 142,  228,  364,  392,  460-1. 

—  and  self,  534.                                         ^^H 

^H         —  and    qualities,     chap,     iii.. 

—  bare,  340.                                              ^H 

^H                  142,    178  foil.,    469,    476, 

—  connected  with  body,  chap.                ^^M 

H 

xxiii.                                                          1 

^H         —  and  thought,  477-481. 

—  continuity  of,  313-5.                               ^^1 

^H          —  hold    only    between     phen- 

—  identity  of  contents  of,  344                ^^M 

^H                  omena,  322,  445  foil. 

folL                                                      ^M 

^B          —  imply  a  whole,    21-2,    123, 

—  identity  of  several,  347  foil.                  ^^M 

^m               142,  180,  228,   445    foil.. 

—  immortality  of,  501  foil.                         ^^B 

H            488, 528. 

—  interaction  of,  343  foil.                                  ■ 

H          Relativity,  107,  350,  353,  364, 

—  origin  of,  337.                                   ^^^fl 

^H                 420,  422.     Cf.  Finite. 

—  separation  of,  343  foil.                      ^^^^| 

^1         Religion,  150,  438-454. 

—  suspension  of,  338.                              ^^^^ 

^H          —  origin  of,  438. 

Space,  chap.  iv.                                          ^^H 

^H         Resistance,  116,  235,  338,  263, 

—  and  Nature,  267-9.                              ^^H 

^B                 269. 

—  empty,  17,  38,  288  foil                        ^^M 

—  origin  of,  221.                                          ^^H 

^H         Self,  all   is  state  of.      See  £x- 

—  self-contradictory,  chaps,  iv.,                ^^M 

^H                 perience. 

^^M 

^H         —  and  other  selves,  254  foil. 

—  unity  of,  222,  286  foil.                         ^^M 

^H          — -  and  pleasure,  407. 

Spiritual,  what,  498-9.                               ^^M 

^H         —  and  series,  316  foil. 

Spiritualism,  503,  506.                                 ^^B 

^H         —  and  soul,  524. 

Standard.     See  Criterion.                                1 

^H         —  meanings  of,  chap.  ix. 

—  is  double,  375,  414  foil.,  440.                 ^M 

^H         —  mere  or  chance,  loo-i,  233 

Succession,  perception  of,  49-               ^^M 

■                 folL 

51, 98-9-                             ^M 

558 


INDEX, 


Succession,  permanent  in,  52. 

—  rule  of,  505. 
Subject  and  object,  460. 

This,    175,    chap,    xix.,    249- 

50.  398. 
Thisness,  175,  chap.  xix. 
Things,  chap.  viii. 

—  and  properties,  19  foil. 
Thought    and    existence,    374, 

378  foil. 

—  and  ideality,  472. 

—  and  judgment,  366  foil. 

—  and  reality,  chap,  xv.,  276, 

315,  544  foil. 

—  and  will,  89,  469  foil. 

—  dualistic,  168  foil. 

—  more  than  its  object,    169, 

174. 

—  nature  of,  152-5,  357,  360 

foil.,  460  foil. 

—  not  primary  or  self-evident, 

477  foil. 
Time,  chaps,  iv.,  xviii. 

—  disregarded  by  Science,  208. 

—  present,  40-2,  208. 

—  unity  of,  chap,  xviii. 
Truth,  chap,  xv.,  462,  544  foil. 

—  and  existence,  166. 


Truth  and  goodness,  402-3, 467. 

—  conditional,  361    foil.,   369, 

chap,  xxvii. 

—  degrees  of,  chap.  xxiv. 

—  must  not   exclude  its    own 

existence,  122,  129. 

Unique,  229,  251-2. 

Unity,  knowledge  of,  159-60. 

—  substantial,  140. 

—  ultimate,  468  foil.,  519  foil. 
Unknowable,  128. 
Unknown,    how    far    possible, 

504  foil.,  512  foil. 

Vacuum.     See  Space. 
Validity,  362  foil.,  376. 

Will,  115,  462  foil. 

—  and  resolve,  463. 

—  and  thought,  89,  469  foil. 

—  not  primar)',  477  foil. 

—  supremacy  of,  483  foil. 
World,  our  not  =  universe,  200, 

214-6. 

—  our  want  of  unity  in,  213  foil., 

368. 
Worth,  373,  402,  497-8.    Cf. 
Standard,  Perfection,Good. 


Butler  &  Taiwor,  Tlit  Setwood  PriittinK  Works,  Frome,  md  L.on<]on. 


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