1 Philosophical Review, p. 489.

2 See above Philosophical Review/ pp. 495-7

3 Philosophical Review, p. 495.

† pp. 181-2. In what I have said here about the sense of Time, I am not implying that in my view it is there from the first. On the contrary I think the opposite is more probable; but I saw no use in expressing an opinion.

Still this whole question, however answered, |182| 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 objection 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 appearance. 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, further, this fact, as such, is not reconcilable with the Absolute. And, if we could not in any way perceive how the fact can be unreal, we should 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 existence 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 appearance. With this, its discord, we see at once, may pass as an element into a wider harmony. And, with this, the appeal to fact at once becomes worthless.
  It is mere superstition to suppose that an appeal to experience can prove reality. That I find something in existence in the world or in my self, shows that this something exists, and it cannot show more. 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 recognized, 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 |183| reverence nothing but what by criticizm and denial the more unmistakably asserts itself.

  Time is so far from enduring the test of criticizm, 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 attempt here first is to show how by its inconsistency time directs us beyond itself. It points to something higher in which it is included and transcended.
  1. 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 consistent, 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.
  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 take 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 existence of time. For it habitually treats past and future as one thing with the present (Chapter viii). The |184| 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 obvious considerations. They should suffice to point out that for science reality at least tries to be timeless, 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 Indiscernibles—not only is this so, but the whole mass of what is called ‘Association’ implies the same principle. For such a connection does not hold except between universals. 1 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 degrade time to the level of appearance. But our entire mental life, on the other hand, has its movement 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 connections which rule in darkness our lowest psychical nature, or are used consciously by science, succession 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.

1 On these points see my Principles of Logic, and, below, Chapter xxiii.

And it is the inconsistency, and hence the |185| 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 attribute 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 already 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 which its special quality is merged. Its own temporal 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 possibility 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 protests 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 they are, I will add some remarks. There are considerations which help to weaken our belief in time’s solidity. It is no mass which stands out and |186| declines to be engulfed. It is a loose image confusedly thrown together, and that, as we gaze, falls asunder.
  1. 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 and, since they happen, we go on to a further conclusion. We regard them as members in one temporal 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 temporarily, 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 imaginary 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.

1 On this point see Chapter xxiii.

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 |187| 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 cannot say that one comes before, or comes after, the 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 today’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 existence. What is presented is ‘real’, and from this basis I construct a time-series, both backwards and forwards; |188| and I use as binding links the identical points in any content suggested. 1 This construction I call the "real" 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 phenomena, 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 all time-series have 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, I can discover no answer. So far as I can see, there 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 regarding 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.

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

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 |189| 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 possessor 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 phenomena 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 experience. 1 That side, on which fresh sensations come in, is what we mean by the future. In our perception of change elements go out, and something new comes to us constantly; and we construct the time-series entirely with reference to this experience. 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.
  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 difference exist in our beings, something too which compels us to arrange other lives and all 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.

1 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.

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 |190| in this construction, 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 I could experience their 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 both directions harmoniously combined in a consistent whole.
  To transcend experience and to reach a world of 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? 1 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.

See Chapter xxii.

  |191| It is not hard to conceive a variety of time-series existing 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:

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 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 sensation peculiar to itself. Now without any question these perceptions must exist 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, corresponding 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. 1

1 On the possibility of this compare Chapter xxiii.

The distinctions |192| 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 witchcraft 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 that neither for the temporal unity of all time-series, nor for the community of their direction, is there one shred of evidence. However great their variety, 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 cannot 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. 1

  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 coexistent. 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.

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

This must be considered possible until |193| we find some good argument in favour of causal unity. And then, even in our own world, how unsatisfactory the succession laid down in causation! It is really never true that mere a produces mere b. 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, xxiii, xxiv). And the whole succession itself, if defensible, may admit of transformation. We assert that (X)b is the effect which follows on (X)a, 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 filled out, is transmuted, and which, when supplemented, 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 ground of causation. But we have seen, in addition, in our sixth chapter that this ground is indefensible. By its own discrepancy causation points beyond itself to higher truth; and I will briefly, here once more, attempt to make this plain. Causation implies change, and it is difficult to know of what we may predicate change without contradiction. To say ‘a becomes b, 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 Xb’; but, if X is a and afterwards b, then, since a has ceased to qualify it, a change has happened within X. But, if so, then apparently we require a further permanent. But if, on the other side, to avoid this danger, we take Xa not to change, we are otherwise ruined. For we have somehow to predicate of X both elements at once, and where is the succession? The successive elements coexist unintelligibly 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 b’ be the |194| truth, if before mere a was true? Shall we answer ‘No, not mere a; it is not mere Xa, but Xa (given c) which is later also b’? But this reply leaves us still face to face with a like obstacle; for, if Xa (c) is X later b, then how separate these terms? If there is a difference between them, or if there is none, our assertion in either case is untenable. For we cannot justify the difference if it exists, or our making it, if it does not exist. Hence we are led to the conclusion that subject and 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 comprehension. 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 b? 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 forever. 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.
  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 universe. It is only when misunderstood |195| 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 on the nature of space. 1 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 explain the origin of space; and indeed to show how it comes to exist 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 impossible? Is its existence a thing incompatible with the Absolute? Such a question, in my judgment, requires little discussion.
  If we could prove that the spatial form were a development, 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 exist. 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, is entirely inconsistent It attempts throughout to 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 solution of its discords. Space seeks to lose itself in a higher perception, where individuality is gained without forfeit of variety. 2

1 I must here refer back to Chapter iv.

2 The question as to whether, and in what sense, space possesses a unity, may be deferred to Chapter xxii. A discussion 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.

  |196| 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.

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Chapter XIX. The This and the Mine

|197-212| Their general nature, 197. They are positive and negative, 197. Feeling as immediate experience of reality, 199-201. The This as feeling of reality, and as positive fragmentariness, 201-02. The This as negative. It transcends itself, 201-02. The This as unique and as Self-will, 203-05. Is there more than content in the This? 206. Does any content stick in the This? 233. No, it only seems to do so through our failure, 206-12. The ‘merely mine’, what, 209.

  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 engulfed. The ‘this’ and the ‘mine’ are undeniable; 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 immediate fact must always come as something felt in an experience, and an experience always must be particular, and, in a sense, must be ‘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 experiences 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 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 shifting basis a rash conclusion is hastily drawn. But the singular reality, after all, may not be single and self-existent. 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.
  |198| The ‘this’ and the ‘mine’ express the immediate character of feeling, and the appearance of this character in a finite centre. Feeling may stand for a psychical stage before relations have been developed, 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 coexisting mass, not perceived as parted and joined by relations even of coexistence. 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 coexistence, 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’. 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 imperfection 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 because it includes and is superior to mediation. It develops, and |199| 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 revelation, if misleading, is never quite untrue. 1
  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 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 suppose, 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 existence 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 Absolute. 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 absorption by the whole.

1 It is mere thoughtlessness that finds in Resistance the one manifestation of reality. For resistance, in the first place, is full of unsolved contradictions, and is also fixed and consists in that very character. And in the second place, what experience can come as more actual than sensuous pain or pleasure?

  |200| 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 incompatible, are not the same thing. And in such fragmentariness, viewed as positive, I see no objection to our view. The plurality of presentations is a fact, and it, therefore, makes a difference 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 overcome, 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 doubt if this result is possible. We have discovered, 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 dissolved 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 containing 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 throughout it was at once intuition and feeling and will. But, if so, the opposition of the ‘this’ becomes at once unmeaning. For feelings, 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? It |201| would indeed be strange if bare positive feelings proved recalcitrant and solid, and stood out against absorption. For 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 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 compatible at once with our view of the universe.
  An immediate experience, viewed as positive, is so far not exclusive. It is, so far, what it is, and it does not repel anything. But 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 exclusive 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 not 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" is, on all sides, open and plain. Appearing as immediate, it, on the other side, has contents which are not consistent with themselves, and which refer themselves beyond. Hence the inner nature of the ‘this’ leads it to pass outside itself |202| towards a higher totality. And its negative aspect is but one appearance of this general tendency. Its very exclusiveness involves the reference of itself beyond itself, and is but a proof of its necessary absorption in the Absolute. 1
  And if the ‘this’ is asserted to be all-exclusive 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 possible. 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. 2 And only in this sense can we call its recurrence impossible. But here with uniqueness once more we have negative relations, and these relations involve an inclusive unity. Uniqueness, in this sense, does not resist assimilation 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 discussion of this matter (Chapter xxv).

1 The above conclusion applies emphatically to the ‘this’ as signifying the point in which I am said to encounter reality. All contact necessarily implies a unity, in and through which it takes place, and my self and the reality are, here, but partial appearances. 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 that sense of reality which is given by the ‘this’.

2 On this point compare Principles of Logic, Chapter ii.

  |203| We have found that the ‘this’, taken as exclusive, proclaims itself relative, and in that relation forfeits its independence. And we have seen that, 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 something more than content. For by combining qualities 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"’ are felt as one. And here content, as implying distinction, will be absent from the ‘this’. But such an undivided feeling, we have also seen, is 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 something 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 separated by distinction and analysis, and, one after another, can thus be brought forward as ideal predicates. |204| 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 experience throughout; 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. 1
  But it is easy here to deceive ourselves and to fall into error. For taking a given whole, or more probably selecting one portion, we begin to distinguish and to break up its confused coexistence. 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 stubborn exclusiveness. It is held to possess either in its nature a repellent content, or something else, at all events, which is intractable. But the whole conclusion 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 introduced, must of necessity burst the ‘this’, and destroy it from within. The ‘this’, we have seen, is a unity below relations and ideas; and a unity, able to develop 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 to exhaust the full deliverance of our ‘this’, and the residue, left there by our mere failure, is then assumed blindly to stand out as an irreducible aspect. For, if we have confined our ‘this’ to but one portion of the felt totality, we have omitted from our analysis, perhaps, the positive aspect of its special unity. But our analysis, if so, is evidently incomplete and misleading.

1 Compare here p. 175, and Principles of Logic, chapter ii.

And then, perhaps again, |205| qualifying 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 another source of fallacy. We may confuse the feeling which we study with the feeling which we are. Attempting, 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. 1
  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 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.

1 Success here is impossible because, apart from the difficulty of analysis and exhaustion, our present observing attitude forms a new and incompatible feature. It is an element in our state now, which (ex hypothesi) was absent from our state then. In this connection I may remark that to observe a feeling is, to some extent, always to alter it. For the purpose in hand that alteration may not be material, but it will in all cases be there. I have touched on this subject in Principles of Logic, p. 65, note.

  |206| 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-transcendent 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 separate 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 ‘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. 1 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.

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

All chance is relative; and the |207| 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 appearance, of course, is not always presentation to outer sense. All that in any way we experience, we must experience within one moment of presentation. 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 relation to that defect is but part of the given. It may be as ideal otherwise as you please, but to that extent 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, it is not owned and appropriated. It lingers, we may say, precariously and provisionally.
  But at this point we may seem to have encountered an obstacle. For in the given fact there is always a coexistence of elements; and with this coexistence we may seem to ascribe positive content to the ‘this’. Property, we asserted, was lacking to it, and that assertion now seems questionable. For coexistence supplies us with actual knowledge, and none the less it seems given in the content of the ‘this’. The objection, however, would rest on misunderstanding. It is positive knowledge when I judge that in a certain space or time certain features coexist. 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 briefly.
  (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 element within a whole, with a reference beyond itself to other |208| 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. 1
  (b) And more probably the objection had something 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 positive character. But again, 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 coexistence of elements. I do not mean, of course, that a whole of feeling is not positive 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 beyond that moment. And thus the coexistence of a 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 internal relations properly do not belong to the ‘this’ itself. For its character does not admit of separation and distinction. Hence, to distinguish elements within this whole, and to predicate a relation of coexistence, is self-contradictory.

1 See above, and compare also Chapter xxi.

Our operation, in its |209| 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 coexistence and a distinction of content, the mere ‘this’ commits suicide.
  From another point of view, doubtless, the observed is a mere coincidence, when compared, that is, with a purer way of understanding. The relation is true, subject to the condition of a confused context, which is not comprehended. And hence the connection observed is, to this extent, bare conjunction and mere coexistence. Or it is chance, when you measure it by a higher necessity. It is a truth conditioned by our ignorance, and so contingent 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 aesthetics, 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. 1 It may be supposed that an element, such perhaps as pleasure, is a fixed part of something 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.

1 Or again, having no clear ideas, we may try to help ourselves with such phrases as ‘the individuality of the individuals’.

It is my content, so far as not |210| 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 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 bearing on the point which I am endeavouring to make good. Hence, the fact of their coexistence is contingent, 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 biased by false doctrine, forces on our notice this alienation of content. Our whole mental life moves by a transcendence |211| of the ‘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 coexistence 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 except 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 possibility. 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 systems, the perplexing references of each same feature to many ideal wholes, and again that positive special feeling, which we have dealt with above—all this detail is not made one in any way which we can verify. That 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 is no element but content, and we have found that no content, on the other side, is the possession of the ‘this’. There 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, |212| but blank failure in regard to the claim of an idea. 1 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 involving an actual relation to an idea, the ‘this’ already has, so far, transcended itself. The refusal of something 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 universal. And the exclusiveness of the ‘this’ everywhere 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 the 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.

1 Chance, in this sense of mere unperceived failure and privation, can hardly, except by a license, be called chance. It cannot, at all events, be taken as qualifying the ‘this.’

Top ↑

Chapter XX. Recapitulation

|213-217| Result so far, 213-14. Individuality and Perfection, are they merely negative? 214-16. Perfection and quantity, 216-17. There is but one perfect being, 217.

  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 contradictory, while it contains in its essence the contradiction 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 counterbalance one another’s failings. It has a superabundance in which all partial discrepancies are resolved and remain as higher concord.
  And we found that this Absolute is experience, because that is really what we mean when we predicate or speak of anything. It is not one-sided experience, as mere volition or mere thought; but it 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 differences. And because it cannot contradict itself, and does not suffer a division of idea from existence, 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 |214| 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 explanation 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 anything which tends to show that our Absolute is not possible? And, so far as we have gone, we have 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 import 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 negation of the discordant and discrepant, and a doubt, perhaps, may have arisen about their positive aspect. Are they positive at all? When we predicate them, do we assert or do we only deny? Can it be maintained that these 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 individuality 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 beforehand, but I will point out once more its cardinal mistake.
  |215| In the first place a mere negation is unmeaning (p. 121-2). To deny, except from a basis of positive 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 predicated of our Absolute. It is indeed because of this that we have called it individual and perfect.
  1. It is, first, plain that at least the idea of affirmative being supports the denial of discrepancy and unrest. Being, if we use the term in a restricted 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 distinction of content from existence, a separation which is overcome. Being (proper), on the other hand, is immediate, and at a level below distinctions; 1 though I have not thought it necessary always to employ these terms in a confined meaning. However, in its general sense of experience, being underlies 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 individual, 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, notwithstanding, 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.

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

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 |216|—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 perfection. 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 undiminished in the perfect. The idea of a being qualified 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 be realized in its outline, though certainly not in detail.

  I will advert in conclusion to an objection drawn from a common mistake. Quantity is often introduced into the idea of perfection. For the perfect seems to be that beyond which we cannot go, and this tends naturally to take the form of an infinite number. But, since any real number must be finite, we are at once involved here in a hopeless contradiction. 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 the paradox really, I should say, exists only through misunderstanding. 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 |217| supposition would be absurd. Or, again, we imagine first a creature complete 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 elements, and by consequence also a loss of perfection. And thus a paradox has been made by our misunderstanding. We assumed completion, and then surreptitiously added a condition which destroyed it. And this, so far, was a mere error.
  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 existences. And this is not because one surpasses the other in size; for that is wholly irrelevant. It is because finite existence and perfection are incompatible. 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 relations 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 incompleteness, and unrest, and unsatisfied ideality, are the lot of the finite. There is nothing which, to speak properly, is individual or perfect, except only the Absolute.

Top ↑

Chapter XXI. Solipsism *

|218-30| Problem stated, 218. The Experience appealed to is Direct or Indirect, 219. Direct Experience does not give my self as sole substantive, 219-21. 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, 221-24. Then, if so, can we stop at our past and future self, or must we conclude also to other souls? 224-25. Neither can be demonstrated, but both depend on the same argument, 255-28. Nor would unreality of other selves prove Solipsism, 228. Everything is, and also is not, my experience, 228-29. Truths contained in Solipsism, 229-30.

  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 position 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 unwillingness 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 doctrine. Upon our general theory they lose their foundation and vanish.
  The argument in favour of Solipsism, ⌘ put most simply, is as follows. ‘I cannot transcend experience, and experience must be my experience. From this it follows that nothing beyond my self exists; for what is experience is its states’.

* Chapter xxi. In Part III, Chapter iii., of Mr. Hobhouse’s work on the Theory of Knowledge, I find an argument against ‘subjective idealism’ which it may be well to consider briefly. The same argument would appear also suited, if not directed, to prove the reality of primary qualities taken as bare. And though this is very probably not intended, and though I find the argument in any case difficult to follow, I will criticize it, so far as I understand it, from both points of view.
  The process seems to consist, as was natural, in an attempt at removal by elimination of all the conditions of a relation A-B, until A-B is left true and real by itself. And A-B in the present case is to be a relation of naked primary qualities, or again a relation of something apart from and independent of myself. After some assertions as to the possibility of eliminating in turn all other psychical facts but my perceptive consciousness—assertions which seem to me, as I understand them, to be wholly untenable and quite contrary to fact—the naked independence of A-B appears to be proved thus. Take a state of things where one term of the connection is observed, and the other is not observed. We have still here to infer the existence of the term unobserved, but an existence, |557| because unobserved, free (let us say first) from all secondary qualities. But I should have thought myself that the conclusion which follows is quite otherwise. I should have said that what was proved from the premises was not that A-B exists naked, but that A-B, if unconditioned, is false and unreal, and ought never to have been asserted at all except as a useful working Action. In other words the observed absence of one of the terms from its place, i.e. the field of observation, is not a proof that this term exists elsewhere, but is rather here a negative instance to disprove the assumed universal A-B, if that is taken unconditionally. Of course if you started by supposing A-B to be unconditionally true, you would at the start have assumed the conclusion to be proved.
  And, taken as directed against Solipsism, the argument once more is bad, as I think any argument against Solipsism must be, unless it begins by showing that the premises of Solipsism are in part erroneous. But any attempt at refutation by way of elimination seems to me even to be absurd. For in any observation to find in fact the absence of all Coenesthesia and inner feeling of self is surely quite impossible. Nor again would the Solipsist lightly admit that his self was coextensive merely with what at any one time is present to him. And if further the Solipsist admits that he cannot explain the course of outward experience, any more than he can explain the sequence of his inmost feelings, and that he uses all such abstract universals as your A-B simply as useful fictions, how can you, by such an argument as the above, show that he contradicts himself? A failure to explain is certainly not always an inconsistency, and to prove that a view is unsatisfactory is not always to demonstrate that it is false. Mr. Hobhouse’s crucial instance to prove the reality of A-B apart from the self could to the Solipsist at most show a sequence that he was unable to explain. † How in short in this way you are to drive him out of his circle I do not see—unless of course he is obliging enough to contradict himself in advance by allowing the possibility of A-B existing apart, or being real or true independently and unconditionally.
  The Solipsist, while he merely maintains the essential necessity |558| of his self to the Universe and every part of it, cannot in my opinion be refuted, and so far certainly he is right For, except as a relative point of view, there is no apartness or independence in the Universe. It is not by crude attempts at elimination that you can deal with the Solipsist, but rather (as in this chapter I have explained) by showing that the connection which he maintains, though really essential, has not the character which he assigns to it. You may hope to convince him that he himself commits the same fault as is committed by the assertor of naked primary qualities, or of things existing quite apart from myself the fault, that is, of setting up as an independent reality a mere abstraction from experience. You refute the Solipsist, in short, by showing how experience, as he has conceived it, has been wrongly divided and one-sidedly narrowed.

† The position of the Solipsist I understand to be this, that no reality or fact has any existence or meaning except the reality of his self. And when he is pressed as to an order of phenomena which he cannot explain, I do not see how on and from his own premises he is to be precluded from appealing to unknown conditions in his self. ‘Surely’, he might reply, ‘on any view no one can actually explain everything, and merely for the sake of explaining things somewhat better I decline to assert what is demonstrable nonsense. And the only proper course is, as I have pointed out, to show that his premises are partly mistaken.

⌘ “Solipsism, in philosophy, an extreme form of subjective idealism that denies that the human mind has any valid ground for believing in the existence of anything but itself. The British idealist F.H. Bradley, in Appearance and Reality (1893), characterized the solipsistic view as follows: ‘I cannot transcend experience, and experience must be my experience. From this it follows that nothing beyond my self exists; for what is experience is its [the self’s] states’. Presented as a solution of the problem of explaining human knowledge of the external world, it is generally regarded as a reductio ad absurdum.”–Encyclopedia Britannica

  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 |219| 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 experience 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 felt moment. This is a distinction the fatal result of which Solipsism has hardly realized; for upon neither 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 develop 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 illusion. Such an experience can supply us with no reality beyond that of the moment. There is no faculty which can deliver the immediate revelation 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 Solipsism is founded. We have always instead either too much or too little. For the distinction and separation of subject and object is not original at all, and is, in that sense, not a datum. And hence |220| the self cannot, without qualification, be said to be given (ibid.). I will but mention this point, and will go on 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 subject 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 that only one of these two things is real, and that all the rest of the given total is merely its attribute. That 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 adjective 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 {subjective} ‘Idealism’, the process essentially is the same. It equally consists, 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 boundaries 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 rejecting 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 supervening 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 |221| gives the ‘this-mine’. It gives neither the ‘mine’ as an adjective of the "this," nor the "this" as dependent on and belonging to the ‘mine’. Even if it did so for the moment, that would still not be enough as a support for Solipsism. But experience supplies the character required, 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 to remain within the limits of direct experience. Now it would not be easy to point out what is given to us immediately. It would be hard to show what is not 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 immediate present?
  This identification, we have seen, is impossible; and the attempt to remain within the boundary of the mere ‘this’ is hopeless. The self-discrepancy 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 movement of the mind implies disengagement from the mere ‘this’; and |222| 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 transcendence 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 to extend the boundaries of the subject. That will, in short, stick hopelessly forever 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 become part of a larger unity.
  The objection may be stated better thus. 1 ‘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 discoverable 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 distinctions 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’.

1 On this whole matter compare my Principles of Logic, Chapter ii.

  |223| 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 predicates. 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 within my feeling. For the latter may, by addition, be extended beyond its own proper limits. 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 exclude 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 is 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 of 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 anything 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 incapacity 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.

* pp. 223-4. With regard to the window-frame the possible objection which I had in my mind was the reply, ‘But a frame surely is at least as real as a window-pane’. That obj1xection, so far as I know, has not yet been made. I have however seen this urged, that, when limited transparencies are gone, we are left with empty |556| space. But I cannot, imagine why through my window should come nothing but white light, and I see nothing but blank space. Why must a transparent window, when I look through it, be a mere formless translucency?

Because I cannot spread out my window until all is transparent, and all windows disappear, this |224| 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 impotence (Chapter xix). I am aware of the miserable inaccuracy of the metaphor, and of the thoughtless 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 disappearance 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.

  (b) 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, conducts us to a ‘me’ which embraces all immediate experiences. But, Solipsism may argue, this process cannot 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. But, if I am asked to justify my belief that other selves, beside my own, are in the world, the answer must be this. I arrive at other souls by |225| 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 again with sensations and volitions, as no other group can be. 1 But, since there are other groups like my body, these must also be qualified by similar attendants. 2 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 argument, 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 fails to reach completeness. 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. 3 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. 370 foll. (No. 47). It is hardly necessary for present purposes to elaborate this argument.

2 This step rests entirely on the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles.

3 Compare Chapter xxvii.

Their difference in time could not permit them both to be wholly the same, |226| 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 I 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 redintegration from the present. * Let us call the present X (B-C), with an ideal association x (a-b). The reproduction of this association, and its synthesis with the 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 x with X. 1 But 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 X; x is different from X, and b is different from B. And again, the passage, through this defective identity to another concrete fact, may to some extent be vitiated by unknown interfering conditions. Hence I cannot prove that the yesterday’s self, which I construct, did, as such, have an actual existence in the past. The concrete conditions, 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 practically certain. And in each case the result, and our way to it, is in principle the same.

* p. 226. With regard to Redintegration—without wishing to commit myself to any decided view—I have assumed that to be fact which is generally taken to be so, viz., that among the members of a series there is reproduction only forwards, i.e. from a to b and not also from b to a. The first member in the series cannot therefore be recalled by any later member directly. This must be done indirectly and through the common character and the unity of the series. This character, because associated with the whole series inclusive of the end, can, given the end, recall the beginning. But in what this character and unity consists is a most difficult problem. It is a problem however which calls for treatment by anyone who tries to deal systematically with the principles of psychology. It will be understood that in this Note I am speaking of mere serial reproduction, but that on the other hand I am not assuming that even reproduction forwards, from a to b, can be taken ultimately as merely direct. †

† Cf. Mind, N. S. No. 30, p. 7.

1 For the sake of simplicity I have omitted the process of correcting 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.

Both other selves and my own self are intellectual constructions, each as secure |227| 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, both results must be accepted. For the process, which conducts you to other selves, is not weaker sensibly, if at all, than the construction 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 preeminent reality of 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. 71-72, 187). I prefer, in passing, to notice that confusion as to the present limits of self, which is so familiar a feature in hypnotic experiments. The assumption of a suggested foreign personality is, I think, strong evidence for the secondary nature of our own. Both, in short, are results of manufacture; and to account otherwise for the facts seems clearly impossible. 1
  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.

1 It is of course the intervention of the foreign body which prevents my usually confusing foreign selves with my own. Another’s body is, in the first place, not immediately connected throughout with my pleasure and pain. And, in the second place, its states are often positively incompatible with mine.

Even if I had secured a right to the possession of my past self, and no right to the acceptance of |228| 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 inanimate. 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 misunderstanding. 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 pressed into falsehood. It is true that all I experience 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 possesses 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. 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 psychical series. In thought the important feature is not our mental state, as such; and the same truth, if less palpable, is as certain with volition. My will is mine, but, |229| none the less, it is also much more. The content of the idea willed (to put the matter only on that ground) may be something 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 independent 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. Bur, when these preconceptions are exposed, Solipsism disappears.

  Considered as the apotheosis of an abstraction, 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 my 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 |230| 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 hereafter. 1

1 I shall deal in Chapter xxvii with the question whether, in refuting Solipsism, we have removed any ground for our conclusion that the Absolute is experience.

Top ↑

Chapter XXII. Nature

|231-60| Nature—meaning of, and origin of for us, 231-32. In its essence there is an Antinomy. It is relation of unknown to unknown, 232-35. It is a mere system of the conditions of some phenomena, and an inconsistent abstraction, 235-36. Is all Nature extended? 236-38. Is any part of Nature inorganic? 239-41. Is it all relative to finite souls? 241-47. These questions not important, 227-48. Identity of Nature, 248-50. Position of physical science, 250-53. Unity of Nature, 253-54. Solidity, 255-56. Infinity of Nature, 257-58. Its Uniformity, 258-59. Nature is contingent, in what sense, 250-60.

  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 properties 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 entire 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. 1
  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 standing 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 of secondary qualities. This world strikes us as not dependent on the inner life of anyone. 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.

1 For some further remarks see Mind, No. 47 (Vol. XII).

Such a supposition to the average man |232| 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 the 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 unfortunate 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 consider 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; but, on the other hand, (b) My body is only for Nature.
  (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 generally 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 necessary to enter.
  (b) And yet most emphatically, as we have seen at the beginning 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 |233|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 indefinite 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 illusions. No such peculiar intuition can bear the light of a serious psychology. The internal feelings which I experience 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 anything is in itself. It gives us one thing as qualified 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 develop this further.
  That the outer world is only for my organs appears inevitable. But what is an organ except so far 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 |234| 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. 1 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 forever. 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 D is itself real as a body, you can only do so on the witness of another organ E or F. You can in no case arrive at a something material existing 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 dependent, 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 substantive, to which the other belongs, as an appendage or appurtenance, seems quite against reason. We are, in brief, confirmed in the conclusion we had reached.

1 For me my own brain in the end must be a state of my own brain, p. 263.

Both Nature |235| and my body exist necessarily with and for one another. And both, on examination, turn out to be nothing apart from their 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. 1 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 apprehension, which gives us qualities and relations, each the condition of and yet presupposing the other. And we have no means of knowing how this confusion 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 nothing 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 interrelation between the organism and Nature, a mistake 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 arrangement among phenomena by which the extended 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 coexistence, holding good within a certain section of that which appears to us.

1 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.

But, if you attempt to make it more, you will re-enter those mazes from which |236| 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 forever the state of something further and beyond. And, as we perceived 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 assuredly in that which absorbs them. Nature is but one part of the feeling whole, which we have separated by our abstraction, and enlarged by theoretical necessity and contrivance. And then we set up this fragment as self-existing; and what is sometimes called ‘science’ goes out of its way to make a gross mistake. It takes an intellectual construction of the conditions of mere appearance for independent 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 criticizm.
  We have seen, so far, that mere Nature is not real. Nature is but an appearance within the reality; it is a partial and imperfect manifestation of 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 develop this general view in some part of its detail.

  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, I 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 better at once to attempt to get clear on this point. It is, in the first place, quite true that not all of the extended |237| 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 psychical 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 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 somehow spatial. But, if so, Nature and extension will not coincide. Hence we are forced to seek the distinctive essence of Nature elsewhere, and in some non-spatial character.
  In its bare principle I am able to accept this conclusion. 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 presupposes 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 belonging 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 perhaps 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 psychical. 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.

* p. 237 On the question whether and how far psychical states are extended, see an article in Mind, N.S. No. 14.] p. 237.

These groups, again, might serve as the means of communication between souls, and, in short, might answer |238| every known purpose for which Nature exists. Even as things are, when these secondary qualities are localized in outer space, we regard them as physical; 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, I admit that, against my will, I give it a spatial character. But, so far as I see, this may arise from mere infirmity; and the idea of an unextended Nature seems, for my knowledge at least, not self-contradictory.
  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 taking it as actual. For the physical world, which we encounter, is certainly spatial; and we have no interest 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 appearance, 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 consistent with itself. We may, therefore, pass on without 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. 1

1 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 ‘resistance’ have, however, been disposed of already, pp. 100, 199, 233.

  Let us return from this digression. We are to consider Nature as possessed of extension, and we have seen that |239| mere Nature has no reality. We may now proceed to a series of subordinate questions, 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, and to minister directly to, the feeling of the Absolute. 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 have 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 less permanent arrangement of qualities and relations, such as at once falls outside of, and yet immediately 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, I 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, upon 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 concrete 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 |240| (Chapter xxi), it gains on the other hand in extent, by acquiring a greater range of application. And it would seem almost impossible, 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 life. But our failure, on the other side, to discover these symptoms is no sufficient warrant for positive denial. 1 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 presence 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? Any 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 the 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 to fill the unknown with our fancies. It should be clear, when we reflect, that we are in no condition on this point to fix a limit to the possible. 2> Arrangements, 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 cannot call the least portion of Nature inorganic.

1 It is natural in this connection to refer to Fechner’s vigorous advocacy.

2 If we consider further the possibility of diverse material systems, and of the compenetrability of bodies within each system, we shall be even less disposed to dogmatize; see below, pp. 287, 289.

For some practical purposes, of course, |241| the case is radically 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. But in metaphysics such an attitude cannot be justified. 1 We, on one side, have positive knowledge 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. For finite organisms, as we have seen, are but phenomenal appearance, and both their division and their unity is transcended in the Absolute. And assuredly 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 included in a single and all-absorbing experience, It will become a feature and an element 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 outside of the Absolute’s perfection. But the question as to the necessity of experience may still be raised in a modified sense. Is there any Nature not experienced 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 percipient? Of course, if this is so, we cannot perceive them. But the question is whether, notwithstanding, we may, or even must, suppose that such a margin exists, (a) Is a physical fact, which is not for some finite sentient being, a thing which is possible? And (b), in the next place, have we sufficient ground to take it also as real? *

* p. 241-2. I would here request the reader’s attention to the fact that, while for me ‘soul’ and ‘finite centre’ are not the same (p. 468-9), I only distinguish between them where it seems necessary.

1 On the main principle see Chapter xxvii.

  (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 |242| certain conditions, can exist apart from them, is perhaps going too far. But, on the other side, some qualities 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 require the mediation of a finite sentience’. 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 we have not removed all meaning from sensible quality And again, if we admit that in the Absolute there 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) cannot 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 opposition. And to take this product as existing outside finite centres seems indefensible. The Nature that falls outside, we must insist, may perhaps not be nothing, but it is not Nature. If it is fact, it is fact which we must not call physical.
  But this whole enquiry, on the other hand, seems unimportant and almost idle. For, though unperceived by finite souls, all Nature would enter into one experience with the contents of these souls. And hence the want of apprehension by, and passage 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 physical.
  (b) A part of Nature, not apprehended by finite mind, we have found in some sense is barely possible. But we |243| may be told now, on the other hand, that it is necessary to assume it. There are such difficulties 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 obvious 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 mortals, and indeed were there in the time before organic 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 hence a physical world, not apprehended by these perceiving centres, must somehow be postulated.
  The objections at first may seem weighty, but I will endeavour to show that they cannot stand criticizm. And I will begin by laying down a necessary 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 always something apart from sensible perception; and that whenever it is perceived, it then develops 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 |244| 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 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 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 today. 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 assumption of knowledge. 1
  (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 extends 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 physical 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 disappeared. But, with the knowledge that we possess, we cannot, even in a relative sense, take this result as universal.

1 ‘Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
  Of all beyond itself.
  – John Keats, Sonnet to the Nile.

It could hold only with respect to those organisms which we know, and, if |245| carried further, 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 without sentience is, in short, a mere construction for science, and it possesses a very partial reality. 1 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 the finite, but certainly not beyond the limits of finite thought In the Absolute possibly there is a margin 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 otherwise 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 conditions. 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. 2

1 See more below, p. 250.

2 That is, of course, so long as Nature is confined to actual physical fact.

  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 |246| to deal 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 experience intuitive, at once and in itself, of both ideas and facts.
  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 content 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 is not as it becomes when in our experience thought is succeeded by perception. It is something which, only under certain conditions, turns to physical 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 already it is fact, hypothetical but still independent. Nature in this sense is not dependent on the fancies of 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 life of its members. Outside of finite experience there is neither a natural world nor any other world at all. 1

1 The question whether any part of the contents of the Universe not contained in finite centres, is discussed in Chapter xxvii.

  |247| 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, certainly is as it is perceived. Secondary qualities are an actual part of the physical world, and the existing 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. Everything 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 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 conclusion is different. We failed to discover any ground for taking that as real, and, if strictly |248| understood, 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 depend on distinctions which, though not lost, are transcended in the Absolute. Whether all perception 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 organisms, and their division from the inorganic, and, again, the separation of finite experiences, from each other and from the whole—these are not anything which, as such, can hold good in the Absolute. That one reality, the richer for every variety, absorbs and dissolves these phenomenal limitations. Whether there is a margin of quality not directly making part of some particular experience, whether, again, there is any physical extension outside the arrangements which immediately subserve feeling centres—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, they would lose that importance our hard distinctions confer on them. And, from our own point of view, these problems have proved partly to be insoluble. 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 reflections; and, though these may agree among themselves, 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 |249| various souls is impossible. Separation into distinct centres of feeling and thought is assumed to preclude all sameness 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 criticizm. 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 parceling out of Nature is but apparent. 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 percipient 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. 1 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 remains, 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.

1 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.

|250| But, if this were a valid objection, I do not know in whose mouth it would hold good. 1 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 consequences in souls, there is nothing here but a 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 something not contained in finite experiences. 2

  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 independent, 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? Nature there is treated as a thing without soul and standing by its own strength. And we thus have been apparently forced into collision with something beyond criticizm. But the collision is illusive, and exists only through misunderstanding. For the object of natural science is not at all the ascertainment of ultimate truth, and its province does not fall outside phenomena.

1 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. It is merely a delusive attempt to do without one. The unrationalized heaping up of such a congeries within the Deity, with its (partial?) 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.

2 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.

The ideas, with which it works, are not intended to set out the |251| true character of reality. And, therefore, to subject these ideas to metaphysical criticizm, 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 phenomena, natural science makes an intellectual construction 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 mark 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 phenomena 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 metaphysics and natural science keep each to its own business, a collision is impossible. Neither needs defence against the other, except through misunderstanding.
  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 transcendent, and offers us a dogmatic |252| and uncritical…metaphysics. Thus to assert that, in the history of the Universe at large, {physical} matter came before mind, is to place development and succession within the Absolute (Chapter xxvi), and is to make real outside the Whole a mere element in its being. And such a doctrine not only is not 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 purpose 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 legitimate 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 criticizm. Criticism begins when what is relative—mere ways of appearance—is, unconsciously or consciously, offered as more. And I do not doubt that there are doctrines, now made use of |253| 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 questions 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 conclusion 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 negative. 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 interrelation would, of course, make them members in one extended whole. But this belief, when we reflect, begins instantly to vanish. Nature in my dreams (for example) possesses extension, and yet 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 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 |254| interrelated in space. And, since in the Absolute 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. 185-9).
  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 perceive. 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. 1 And whatever extension falls outside of this one system of interrelation, 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 arrangements may exist without anything like spatial interrelation.

1 With regard to the past and future of my ‘real’ body and us ‘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 of inconsistency. There is another point, on which it would be interesting to develop 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 insanity and other abnormal states. But their bearing here is obvious.

They will have their unity in the Whole, but no connections in space each outside its own proper system of |255| 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 interpenetrate 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 difficulty.
  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 criticizm. 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 common 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 abolition of spatial distinction, and we may hence define matter in such a way that, with loss of spatial distinction, itself would be abolished. If, that is to say, pieces of matter are so one thing with their extensions as, apart from these, to keep no individual difference—then these pieces obviously cannot penetrate; but, otherwise, they may. This seems to me clear, and I will go on to explain it shortly.
  It is certain first of all that two parts of one space cannot penetrate each other. For, though these two parts must have some qualities beside their mere extension |256| (Chapter iii), such bare qualities are not enough. Even if you suppose 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 of 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 cannot 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 extension. 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 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 physical world as essentially exclusive. We may without contradiction 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. 1

1 I would repeat that in the above remarks I 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 than a relative vacuum is wanted. More could not possibly be used, supposing that in fact more existed. In any case for metaphysics 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.

  |257| 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 explanation. We may be asked, for example, whether Nature is finite or infinite; and we may first endeavour 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, 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 extension 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 of 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 passing. 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. Any finite whole, with its incomplete conjunction of qualities and relations, entails a process of indefinite transition beyond its limits as a consequence. But with the extended, more than anything, this self-transcendence is obvious. Every physical world is, essentially 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 |258| 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 transmuted 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-contradiction. Again the infinity of Nature, its extension beyond all 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 transcends 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 next to the question of what is called Uniformity, I shall dismiss this almost at once. For there is, in part, no necessity for metaphysics to deal with it, and, in part, we must return to it in the following chapter. But, however uniformity 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 qualities. 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 postulates 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 |259| 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 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-existent, and partly hypothetical. 1

  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 experience 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 separation of one element from the whole is both justifiable and necessary. In order to understand the coexistence and sequence of phenomena in space, the conditions of these are made objects of independent study. But to take such conditions for hard realities 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 appearance 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.

1 For a further consideration of these points see Chapter xxiii.

It is the world of those particulars which stand furthest from possessing |260| individuality, and we may call it the region of externality and chance. Compulsion from the outside, and a movement not their own, is the law of its elements; and its events seem devoid of an internal 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.

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Chapter XXIII. Body and Soul

|261-317| They are phenomenal and furnish no ground for an objection, 261-62. Body, what, 263. Soul, what, 263-64. It is not the same as experience. This shown from point of view of the individual, 264-69; and of the Absolute, 269-71. Objections discussed. (1) If phenomenal, is the soul a mere appendage to the organism? Problem of continuity and of dispositions. The soul an ideal construction, 272-79. (2) Does the series imply a transcendent Ego? 279. (3) Are there psychical facts which are not events? 280-85. Relation of Body and Soul 285-317. They are not one thing, 286-88. They are causally connected, 288-93. One is not the idle adjective of the other, 294-97. The true view stated, 297-98; but the connection remains inexplicable, 297-98. How far can body or soul be independent? 298-303. Communication between Souls, its nature, 303-07. Identity of diverse souls, its nature and action, 307-12. Identity within one soul, and how far it transcends the mechanical view, 312-16.

  With the subject of this chapter we seem to have arrived at a hopeless difficulty. The relation of body to soul presents a problem which experience seems to show 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, distinctions 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 knowledge, any view about their connection remains imperfect.
  But this failure to comprehend gives no ground for an objection against our Absolute. It is no disproof of a theory (I 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 objection. And things are still worse where there are aspects which positively collide with the main conclusion. 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 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 general doctrine. 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 |262| are different, and which have existence each by itself, and each in its own right. And then, of course, their connection becomes incomprehensible, and we strive in vain to see how one can influence the other. And at last, disgusted by our failure, we perhaps resolve to deny wholly the 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 connection 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-subsistence, they, of course, cannot come together; and, on the other hand, if they come together, it is because they have been transformed, and are not things, but appearances. Still this last is a conclusion 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, adjectives must qualify their substantives, we turn the soul into a kind of immaterial secretion, ejected and, 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 I shall make no attempt to state the various theories as to the nature and relations of body and soul, and I shall not criticize 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 appearance. And I will attempt forthwith to point out the peculiar nature of each, and the manner in which they are connected with, and influence, each other. |263| 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 purposes, 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 appearance. It is an intellectual construction out of material which is not self-subsistent. This is its 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, 1 and a certain amount of identity in quality, the degree and nature of which last I cannot attempt to fix. And I think, for metaphysics, it is better also to make relation to a soul essential for a body (Chapter xxii). But what 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 makeshift 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’.

1 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.

The criticizm of our First Book has destroyed every claim of |264| 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 1 is a finite centre of immediate experience, possessed of a certain temporal continuity of existence, 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 existence of these events. Take the whole experience of 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 influencing the course of its own changes—this is perhaps the readiest way of defining a soul. 2 But I must endeavour to draw this out, and briefly to explain it.
  It is not enough to be clear that the soul is phenomenal, in the sense of being something 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 complete bewilderment. And a frequent error is to define what is ‘psychical’ so widely as to exclude any chance of a rational result. For all objects and aims, which come before me, are in one sense the states of my soul. Hence, if this sense is not excluded, 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 distinguish the soul’s existence from what fills it, and yet there are few points, perhaps, on which neglect is more common. And we may bring the question home thus.

1 Mind, XII. 355 (No. 47).

2 I have for the moment excluded relation to a body. It is better not to define the soul as "the facts immediately experienced within one organism" for several reasons. I shall return to this point.

If |265| we were to assume (Chapter xxvii) 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, afterwards, let us consider the same thing from outside, 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 feeling 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. I 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 general 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 experience—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 to the distinction, which we noticed before (Chapter xxi), between the diverse |266| 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 and from me. 1 All 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 ‘experience’, 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 I perceive them, or think of them, there is, so far, no discoverable ‘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 existence is a content which works apart 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 meaning 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.

1 I have tried to sketch the main development in Mind, as referred to above.

The two sides of fact, and of content working loose from that fact, are essential to each |267| other. But the essence of the second is disruption of a ‘what’ from a ‘that’, 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 hand, 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 develop the subject in detail. We should have there to point out, and to classify, the causes which affect the succession of psychical phenomena. 1 It is enough here to have laid stress on an essential distinction. Ideal contents appear in, and affect, my existence, but still, for all that, we cannot call them my soul.

1 I have said something on this in Mind, XII. 362-3.

  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 experience itself, It cannot be actual feeling, or that immediate 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 construction which transcends what is given. It is 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 |268| 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 enough 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 essentially 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 coexistence and sequence, and by its subjection to ‘laws’, it has 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 individual 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 application 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 man in its use of its contents. These (we have seen) are 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 extent to which it serves |269| 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 abstraction is maintained. Its life endures only so long 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 appearance.
  In brief, because the existence of the soul is not experienced and not given, 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 flagrant discrepancy with its ‘that’—therefore its whole position 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 purpose. 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 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 fall 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-composition, in which their individualities would be transmuted 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 comprehending, 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 |270| 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 inconsistent. 1 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? 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 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 its way, it affects the souls in their 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.

1 Compare Chapters xv, xix, xxi.

  And, that we may realize this more clearly, we find ourselves |271| 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. 1 But, where we move in circles like these, and where, pushing home our enquiries, we can find nothing but the re lation 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 knowledge, 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 becoming more, each loses its title to that name. The body and soul are, in brief, phenomenal arrangements, which take their proper place in the constructed 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.

1 I am not denying here the possibility of soul without body; see below, p. 300.

  We have seen, so far, that soul and body are, each alike, |272| 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 view 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 offer anything of which we can predicate ‘dispositions’ Hence, if phenomenal, the soul sinks to be an adjective of the 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 erroneously. I must endeavour to say something on these objections in their order.
  (1) I 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 yourself to define the soul in mere psychical terms? Would it not be better to call a soul those psychical facts from time to time experienced within one organism?’ I 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 especially, 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 soul and of body coincide. 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 |273| 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 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. 1
  But without this introduction what becomes of the 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.

1 I may be allowed 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 series 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 phenomenal, and we have on our hands the relation of its plurality to the one Monad—a difficulty which, as we have seen, is insuperable. On the other hand ‘individualistic’ might imply that the soul’s contents do not, in any sense, transcend its private existence. The term, in short, requires definition, quite as much as does the object which it is used to define.

What we find in time is mere appearance; and with regard to appearance I know no reason why it |274| should not cease and reappear without forfeiting 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’s 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 it seems not clear 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 ultimate 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 identical 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 supposed to persist, we seem to have deserted every show of principle. 1

1 On the subject of Identity see more below; and compare Chapter ix.

  There is a further point which, before proceeding, 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. 245). Some of it seemed (at least at some times) to be only hypothetical or barely potential; and I would urge |275| 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 body (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 continuity 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 following 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 cannot say what the soul is at any one time. But at any one time, I reply, the soul is the present datum of psychical fact, plus its actual past and its conditional 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, 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 |276| 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 objection goes on to urge) they are not psychical at all, but merely physical facts. Now to this I reply first that 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, I shall not allow that it has been translated into physical fact. But, even in that case, I should not accept the translation, for I 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 predicate 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 way of saying what we infer that in the future they may be. But we have no right to speak of dispositions 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 conditions, and in the end we should be asserting of the Universe at large. 1

1 I shall endeavour to explain this in the following chapter.

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 |277| meaning more than the probable course of psychical events. *

  But the soul, I shall be reminded, is not continuous 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 assumption 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. 11
  But, on the other side, this admitted breach seems quite unimportant. I can find no reason why a soul’s existence, 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 refusal. We might insist that, at any rate, in the interval the soul has lived elsewhere, or that this interval must, at all events, not be too long; but, so far as I see, in both cases we should be asserting without a ground. 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 nonexistence. But speaking not strictly, but with a view to practical convenience, we might affirm that in these intervals the soul still persists.

11 Unconscious states could also be used to explain ‘dispositions’, in my opinion quite indefensibly. I may add that, within proper limits, I think psychology must make use of unconscious psychical facts.

* p. 277. In the fourth line from the bottom of this page I have altered ‘the same. Or’ into ‘the same, or’. The full stop was, I presume, inserted by an error. In any case I have removed it, since it may lead some reader, if not careful, to take the words ‘we should call them the same’ absolutely. This in fact I find has been done, but the meaning was not really, I think, obscure. I am in the first place not maintaining that no continuous existence at all is wanted for the individual identity of a soul or of anything else. On the contrary I have in several places asserted the opposite. I am speaking here merely of an interval and a breach in continuous existence. And I certainly am not saying that all of us would as a fact assert individual identity despite this breach or interval. I am pointing out that, whether we assert it or deny it, we are standing in each case, so far as I can see, on no defensible principle.
  I am far from maintaining that my answer to the question, ‘What is the soul, especially during those intervals where there seems to be no consciousness,’ is wholly satisfactory. But willing and indeed anxious as I am to receive instruction on this matter from my critics, I cannot say that I have been able as yet to gain the smallest fresh light on it.

We might say it is the |278| 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 required for the soul. It is impossible wholly to exclude 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 in strictness not the body at all. As a matter of fact, doubtless, this event does not happen within our knowledge. We do not find that bodies disappear and once more are re-made; but, merely on that ground, we are not entitled to deny that it is possible. And, if it is possible, then I would urge at once the following conclusions. You cannot, except as a matter of convenience, iden tify the conditions 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. 1
  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 objections of another kind, I will here try to obviate a misunderstanding. The soul is an ideal construction, 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.

1 How far the soul can be said to result from merely physical conditions I shall enquire lower down.

|279| 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 phenomenal 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 Absolute there is neither mere existence at one moment nor any ideal construction. Each is merged in a higher and all-containing Reality (Chapter xxiv).

  (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 phenomenal, 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, because 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 oneness remains standing outside the many, as a further finite unit. You cannot show how the series becomes 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, metaphysically 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 |280| metaphysics. Its alleged function must be confined to psychology, an empirical science, and the further consideration of it here would be, therefore, irrelevant. 1
  (3) But our account of the soul, as a series of events, may be attacked perhaps from the ground of psychology itself. There 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. 2

1 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 at all. It serves only to produce false appearances of explanation, and to throw a mist over what is really left quite unexplained.

2 There are some distinctions which we must keep in mind. By existence (taken strictly) I 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 conjunction of being and 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, made up of perceptible duration.
  By fact I mean either an event, or else what is directly experienced. 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 succession, can contain that which, when distinguished, is more than one event, and it can contain also an aspect which, as distinguished, is beyond events. But I should add that I have not tried to use any of the above words everywhere strictly.

  |281| (a) We have seen that my psychical states, and my private experience, can be at the same time what they are, and yet something much more. 1 Every distinction that is made in the fact of presentation, every content, or ‘what’, 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 present 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 concerned 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, must have its existence. It must appear, somehow, as, or in a particular event, with a given place and duration 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.

1 See above, p. 300, and compare Chapters xix and xxi. And for the relation of existence to thought see, further, Chapter xxiv.

By itself it is not a fact; and, if it were one, |282| it would, 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. 1 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 occurring 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 construction of a series, is an event. And it must happen in a soul; 2 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 somehow 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 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.

1 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 experienced fact.

2 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.

And I doubt if anyone |283| would urge a claim so suicidal and so absurd, unless for the sake of, and in order to defend, a preconceived 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 somehow 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 influence and position results merely from our false assumption. We 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 explain also how one of these stands to, or works on, the other. And the result is open self-contradiction or thoughtless obscurity. But the remedy is to purge ourselves 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, neither ideality nor existence is real. But you cannot 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, |284| on the one hand, to be somehow experienced 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. 1 The Ego and Non-ego are at any time experienced, not in general, but with a particular character. But such an appearance is obviously a psychical event, with a given place in the series. And upon this I urge the following 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, I 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, is certainly somehow experienced, 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. 2

1 I should add that I am convinced that the Ego is a derivative product (Mind, No. 47). But the argument above is quite independent of this conclusion.)

2 If action 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 here 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.

  |285| It would be useless to pursue into its ramifications 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 take it as existing somehow and somewhere alongside, thrusts it back into the sphere of finite particulars. 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 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 psychical 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 regarded 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 |286| discuss the various objections which might be brought against them. I will briefly 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. 316-17). 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 reals within the Absolute. But we have seen that such a conclusion is wholly indefensible. When 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.
  And with this we are brought to a well-known and much-debated question. Is there a causal connection between the physical and the psychical, and are we to say that one series influences the other? I will begin by stating the view which prima 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 unbiased 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 (whichever 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 |287| 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 accompaniments, to maintain that never in past development have they ever made a difference to anything—surely this strikes the common observer as a wilful paradox. 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 influence 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 interaction 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 make one the subordinate and adjective of the 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 today.
  I 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 |288| 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 idea seems baseless, and I do not think it necessary to dwell further on this point. 1
  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 accompaniment resulting from the soul? Both these questions 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 consider it. I will pass to the opposite one-sidedness, a doctrine equally absurd, though, at first sight, seeming more plausible.

1 Of course, even on these 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 ‘occasionalism’ we may say that, since every cause must be limited more or less artificially, every cause therefore is able to be called an ‘occasion’. You may take in further and further conditions, until your partial cause seems an item unimportant, and even therefore ineffective. 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.

  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 time make absolutely |289| 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 produced, 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 secondary 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 confusion which it springs from.
  The falseness of this doctrine can be exhibited from two points of view. It involves the contradiction of an adjective which makes no difference to its substantive, 1 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 criticizm. 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.

The same false principle, which is employed in the materialistic view of the soul, appears in the equally materialistic doctrine of the Real Presence.

  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 is the succession of primary qualities, and it is taken to be a true causal series. Between the secondary products, α, β, γ, is no causal connection, nor do they make any difference to the sequence of C from B and of B from |290| A, They are, each of them, adjectives which happen, but which produce no consequence. But, though their succession 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 and then again by

since α is, in fact, irremovable from A. Nor is it necessary to suppose that the sequence A—B must ever occur by itself. For α will, in fact, accompany A, and β will always occur with B. Still this inseparability will in no way affect our result, which is the outcome and expression of a general principle. A–B–C is the actual and sole thread of causation, while α, β, γ 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 criticizm. 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, 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 |291| 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. 1 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 proposition 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–B β, if (that is to say) in both cases you are keeping to the same A. For if the event β follows, while arising from no difference, you must assert of mere A both ‘–B’ and ‘–B β’. But these two assertions are incompatible. In the same way, if A α has, as a consequence, mere B, it is impossible that bare A should possess the same consequence. If it seems otherwise, then certainly A was not bare, or else α was not relevant. And any other conclusion would imply two incompatible assertions with regard to B. 2

  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 differences, which do not make any difference—a 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. 3 And, with this, perhaps we may pass on.

1 The addition of ‘unconditional’ would be surplusage. Cp. Principles of Logic, p. 485.

2 The judgments, ‘B follows from A’ and ‘B follows from Aα’, are, if pure, not reconcilable. The same effect cannot have two causes, unless ‘cause’ is taken loosely. See Mr. Bosanquet’s Logic, Book I, Chapter vi. I have remarked further on this subject below in Chapter xxiv.

3 If there were a reason, then mere A would no longer be the cause of both B and Bβ. I shall return to this lower down.

|292| Let us return to that statement of the case which appeared to us more plausible. There is a succession

and in this the secondary qualities are inseparable from the primary. A–B–C is, 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 supposed to take in, and unless α, β, γ are connected with something outside, we have still the old inconsistency. If A–B–C is the truth, then the succession, which we had, is in fact impossible; and, if the sequence is modified, then A–B–C cannot possibly be true. I will not urge that, if it were true, it would at least be undiscoverable, since, by the hypothesis, α 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 α is an adjective indivisible from A, but is an adjective which at the same time makes no difference to its being. Or α, at any rate, makes no difference to the action of A, but is perfectly inert. But, if so, then, as before, A possesses two predicates incompatible with each other. We cannot indeed say, as before, that in fact it is followed first by mere B, and then again by Bβ. But we, none the less, are committed to assertions which clash. We hold that A produces B, and that A produces Bβ; and one of these judgments must be false. For, if A produces mere B, then it does not produce Bβ. Hence β is either an event which is a gratuitous accident, or else a must have somehow (indirectly or directly) made this difference in B. But, if so, a is not inert, but is a part-cause of B; and therefore the sequence of B from mere A is false. 1 The plausibility of our statement has proved illusory.

1 The reader will remember that β (by the hypothesis) cannot follow directly from α. It is taken as dependent solely on B.

|293| I am loath to perplex the question by subtleties, which would really carry us no further; but I will notice a possible evasion of the issue. The secondary qualities, I may be told, do not depend each on one primary, but are rather the adjectives of relations between these. They attend on certain relations, yet make no difference to what follows. But here the old and unresolved contradiction remains. It cannot be true that any relation (say of A to E) which produces another relation (say of B to F), should both produce this latter naked, and also attended by an adjective, β. One of these assertions must be false, and, with it, your conclusion. It is in short impossible to have differences which come without a difference, or which make no difference 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.1

1 I may perhaps, in this connection, be expected to say something on the Conservation of Energy. I am most unwilling to do this. One who, like myself, stands outside the sciences which 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 example, ‘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 it does not exist; and it is surely only by a licence that you can call the non-existent ‘in a state of conservation’. And hence, passing on, I will next take the Conservation 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 criticizm of that which is altogether beyond me. But, if it is presented, on the other hand, as a statement of fact, I 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 connection. 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 I 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 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 I must venture, respectfully but firmly, to insist on this point.

We have seen that to deny the active connection |294| of body and soul is either dangerous or impossible. *It is impossible, unless we are prepared 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 desertion 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 defensible form.
  Let me say at once that, by a causal connection of mind with matter, I do not mean that one influences the other when bare. I do not mean that soul by itself ever acts upon body, or that mere bodily states have an action on bare soul. Whether anything of the kind is possible, I shall enquire lower down; but I certainly see no reason to regard it as actual.

* pp. 294-5. Without entering here into detail, I will venture to make a remark which I cannot think quite uncalled-for. You cannot by making use of a formula, such as ‘psycho-physical |559| parallelism’—or even a longer formula—absolve yourself from facing the question as to the causal succession of events in the body and the mind. When we say, for example, that the physical prick of a pin causes pain, is this assertion in any sense true or is it quite false? Is the pain not really to any extent, directly or indirectly, the effect of the prick? And, if it is not, of what else is it the effect, or can it again happen quite uncaused and itself be effectless? Clear answers to these questions are, I should say, more easily sought than found.

I understand that, normally, we have an event with two sides, and that these two sides, taken together, |295|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 considered 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 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. 298), 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 in reality but a prominent condition or consequence. And such a mutilation of phenomena is essential to progress. We speak of an intellectual sequence, in 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 comprehend 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 |296| events enter into every link of causation. 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 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 sensation may be regarded as caused by the body; but this view is, taken generally, one-sided 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 phenomenal series. Each, to speak in general, is implicated in the changes of the other. Their supposed independence 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 psychical 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 psychical 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 |297| 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 explanation, but I insist that in the end no explanation 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 coexistence, 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, however 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 impossible. But, if so, their way of connection must remain unintelligible.
  And the same conclusion may be reached by considering 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 unspecified 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.

* Compare Chapter vi.

Our known causes and effects are held always by a licence and partly on |298| sufferance. To observe regularities, to bring one under the other as far as possible, to remove everywhere 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 conditions seems to supply the whole origin of a psychical life. And again, when the soul 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 separation from mind disappears in the Whole. And, when the abstraction is admitted and when we are standing on this basis, it is not certain, even then, that any matter exists unconnected with soul (Chapter xxii). Now, if we bear in mind these considerations, we need not seek to deny that physical conditions 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 beware 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 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 |299| 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 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 depends 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. 1
  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 psychical functions have ceased wholly. You certainly cannot conclude from the absence of familiar phenomena to the absence of everything, however different 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 difficulty. 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 our discussion of this point And what 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 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.

1 Whether mere soul can act on or produce matter, I shall enquire lower down.

But, however |300| interesting for psychology, these cases have little metaphysical importance. 1 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 exclude 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 xxii) 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 depends on, the whole of experience.
  I will 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 untenable. This objection would rest on a misunderstanding. Every law which is true is true always and forever; 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 connection more concrete, and the law is transcended. It 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.

1 Psychology, I should say, has a right to take the soul as suspended, or generally as absent so far as is convenient. I doubt if there is any other limit.

Its existence there, and its action, are inseparable from matter; but a question obviously can be asked |301| 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 might, none the less, be widely scattered and discontinuous; and again organisms might be shared wholly or partially between souls. Further, of whatever 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. 1 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 regarding 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 arrangement of secondary qualities, not extended but constant; and this might accompany psychical life and serve as a body (p. 237). 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 conclusion 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.

1 See further ‘The Evidences of Spiritualism’, Fortnightly Review, No. ccxxviii.

Just as we saw that soul can follow from material conditions, so, in the course |302| 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 nonexistent. 1
  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 inseparable from, and affected by, the changes on the other side. This, so far as body and soul are connected at all, is the normal course of things. But when we went on to investigate, we found a difference. 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 consequence, and again the partial absence or abeyance of psychical links, we found much more than possible. 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 that 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 dissolved in what transcends them—the existence by itself of either body or soul is illusory.

1 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.

Their separation may be used for particular |303| purposes, but it is, in the end, an untrue or a provisional abstraction.

  It is necessary, before ending this chapter, to say 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 certain, 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 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 |304| 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 it is only by thus way that they are able to communicate. Alterations of the phenomenal group which I call my body, produce further changes in the physical environment. And thus, indirectly or directly, other organisms are altered, with consequent effects 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 communication possible. 1
  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 objection 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 everyone 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 convinced of, is briefly this, that we understand and, again, are ourselves understood.

1 Cf. Chapter xxii. 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.

There is, indeed, a theoretical |305| possibility that these other bodies are without any souls, 1 or that, while behaving as if they understood us, their souls really remain apart in worlds shut up from ours. But, when this bare possibility is excluded, 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 internal 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 be actually the same. And the higher we mount from facts of sense, and the wider our principles have 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.

1 I do not mean that it is possible that my soul should contain all the experience which exists.

  But there is a natural mistake which, perhaps, I should |306| 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 communicate. Such a statement would be incorrect. My 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 elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it. With regard to communicability, 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 mistakable; 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 existence 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 principle, no difference between the inner and the outer. 1

1 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.

No experience can lie open to inspection from outside; no direct guarantee of identity is possible. Both our knowledge of sameness, and our way of communication, are indirect and inferential. 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 |307| which all souls live and move, cannot work in common save by the path of external appearance. *

  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 endeavour very briefly to clear 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 together 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 I 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 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.

* p. 307-8. On the question whether and in what sense difference depends on a relation, see Note B., and for a discussion of Resemblance, see (see Note C. The controversy, mentioned in the footnote to p. 348, was continued in Mind, N. S. Nos. 7 and 8, and I would venture to refer any reader interested in the matter to it.

1 Principles of Logic, pp. 261-2. Cp. Ethical Studies, p. 151. I do not understand that there is any material difference on this head between myself and Mr. Bosanquet, Knowledge and Reality, pp. 97-108. I would add that in psychology the alternative, between Association by general resemblance and by (explicit) partial identity, is a false one. The feeling that two things are similar need not imply the perception of the identical point, but none the less this feeling is based always on partial sameness. For a confusion on this head see Stumpf, Tonpsychologie, I., 112-114. And now (while revising these words for the press) I regret to have to add to Stumpf’s name that 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.

2 So long as we avoid this mistake, we may, and even must, affirm that things are different, so far as they are the same, and the same, so far as they are different. To get difference, or sameness, bare would be to destroy its character.

And, apart from such |309| misunderstanding, 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 relativity 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. Our 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 inferred the reality of diverse existences, beings in any case several and finite, and without community of essence. 1 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.

1 The English writers who have objected to identity have left their principle 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 position given to relations. Cp. Principles of Logic, p. 96.

But, if so, and unless some |310| answer is found to this contention, it is impossible to deny that identity is a fact. 1 It is not real ultimately, we are agreed, but then facts themselves are not ultimate, and the question 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; explain how, if identity is not real, the world of experience 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 short, had no basis but confusion and traditional prejudice.
  But the principle that sameness is real and is not destroyed by differences, demands, as we have seen, some 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 as sufficiently discussed. Sameness is real amid differences; but we must neither deny that these differences, in one sense, affect it, nor may we assert that sameness is always a working connection. I 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, in affirming this, we must be on our guard against a serious mistake. For a difference 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 opposite 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.

1 Fact in the sense of unseparated adjective of fact; see above, p. 280.

You then would not have the same thing |311| 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 extends, or what proportion it bears to the accompanying diversity; but sameness, 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 factor may seem overborne. The other conditions here have joined to modify the general consequence, but the law itself has worked fully, and has maintained its selfsame character. And, given two individuals with any part of their content indiscernible, then, while that is so, we are bound, so far, to consider 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 irrefragable, 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 our principle is silent. Whether an identical point in two things 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 perfectly 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. |312| 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 outside 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 identities exist, therefore identity, as a fact, has no actual existence. And such a position seems irrational.
  Our result, so far, is that the sameness between souls is a fact. The identity of their content is just as real as is their separate existence. 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 working force, must be modified when we consider the individual soul. In the course of its internal history we must admit that the sameness of its states is an actual mover. In other words the mechanical interpretation, if throughout applicable 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, considered 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 anything 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. 1

1 I have not thought it necessary in the text to say anything on the view which finds a solution of all puzzles in impact. 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 impart as to everything else.

But then, if so, sameness and difference may |313| appear at first sight to have no 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 nonsense, because the position of the laws is quite inconsistent 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 elements may thus be said to fall outside their own being, their universality seems driven into banishment and forced to reside solely in laws. And, since these laws on the one hand are not 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.
  |314| When we come to psychology this is altered. I do not mean that there the mechanical view ceases wholly, nor do I mean that, where it is superseded, as in the working of pleasure and pain, that which operates must be ideal. 1 But, to a greater or less extent, all psychology, in its practice, is compelled to admit the working power of Identity. A psychologist 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 Redintegration, 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 connecting the present with the past. 2 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. 3 Hence we may say that to a large extent the soul is itself its own laws, consists, itself, in the identity between 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.

1 On this point, and on what follows, compare Mind, xii., pp. 360 and following.

2 I have shown, in my Principles of Logic, that Contiguity cannot be explained by mere Similarity. See the chapter there on the Association of Ideas.

3 The question seems to turn on the amount of inward identity which we are prepared to attribute to a physical thing.

  But I must hasten to add that this view remains gravely imperfect. It is in the end impossible to maintain |315| that anything is because it has 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 associations 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 before 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 inside, the psychological view of identity is no less a compromise. We may perhaps apprehend this by considering the double aspect of Memory. We remember, 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 associations, themselves always universal from the first, 1 are hence by thought deliberately purified. Starting from mere ‘facts’—from those relations which are perceived in confused union with an irrelevant context—thought endeavours to transform them.

* p. 315. On the topic of Association holding only between universals the reader should consult Hegel, Encyklopädie, §§ 452-6.

1 I have endeavoured to prove this point in Principles of Logic, pp. 34 and foll.; 284 and foll.; cp. 507-8. I venture to think that psychology is suffering seriously from want of clearness on this head.

Its advance would end in an ideal world where nothing stands by itself, where, in other words, nothing is |316| forced to stand in relation with what is foreign, but where, on the contrary, truth consists in an absolute relativity. Every element here would be because of something other which supports it, in which other, and in the whole, it finds its own identity. I certainly admit that this ideal cannot 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 inconsistency. We found that body, attempting to work without identity, became unintelligible. And we saw 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 engage us hereafter. We may now briefly recall the main results of this chapter. We have seen that body and soul are phenomenal constructions. They 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. 1 We rejected both the idea of mere concomitance, and of the one-sided dependence of the soul; and we urged that an adjective which makes no difference 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 exist between souls. We concluded that souls affect each other, in fact, only through their bodies, but we insisted that, none the less, ideal identity between souls is a genuine fact. We found, last of all, that, in the psychical life of the individual, we had to recognize the active working of sameness. And we ended this chapter with the reflection which throughout has been near us. We have here been handling problems, the complete solution of which would involve the destruction of both body and soul. We have found ourselves naturally carried forward to the consideration of that which is beyond them.

1 I would append a few words to explain further my attitude towards the view which 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 certainly 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 particular soul and body correspond, so that the first is throughout the fulfillment 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 soul and body is really either intelligible or explicable. My attitude towards this whole doctrine is thus in the main sympathetically neutral.

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Chapter XXIV. Degrees of Truth and Reality *

|318-54| The Absolute has no degrees, but this not true of Existence, 318-19. Truth—nature of, 319-20. It remains conditional, 320. Hence no total truth or error, only more or less of Validity, 320-21. The Standard, what. It has two features which are essentially connected, 321-23. Approach to this measures degree of relative truth, 323. All thought, even mere imagination, has some truth, 323-27. The Standard further specified, in relation to mere phenomena, 327, and to higher appearances, 327-29. No other standard possible, 329-31. And ours is applicable everywhere, 332-34. The world of Sense, its proper place. Neither mere Sense nor mere Thought is real, 334-37. The truer and more real must appear more; but in what sense? 337-38. Complete conditions not same as Reality, 339. Unseen Nature and psychical Dispositions, 339-40. Potential Existence, what, 340-43. Possibility and Chance and external Necessity, relative and absolute, 343-48. Degrees of Possibility, 348-49. The Ontological Proof, its failure and justification, 349-52. Bastard form of it, 352-54. Existence necessary, in what sense, 354.

  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. 1 An attempt to do this, thoroughly and in detail, 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 a system of metaphysics. And such a system I am not undertaking to construct. I am endeavouring merely to get a sound general view of Reality, and to defend it against a number of difficulties and objections. But, for this, it is essential to explain and to justify the predicates of higher and lower. While dealing with this point, I shall develop further the position which we have already assigned to Thought (Chapters xv and xvi).
The Absolute, considered as such, has of course 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 possessed 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, 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.

* Chapter xxiv. |560| The doctrine of the Criterion adopted by me has in various quarters been criticized, but, so far, I venture to think, mainly without much understanding of its nature. The objections raised, for example, by Mr. Hobhouse, Theory of Knowledge, pp. 495-6, I cannot understand in any sense which would render them applicable. I will however in this connection make some statements which will be brief, if perhaps irrelevant.
  (i.) I have never held that the criterion is to be used apart from, instead of on, the data furnished by experience. (ii.) I do not teach that, where incompatible suggestions are possible, we must or may affirm any one of them which we fail to perceive to be internally inconsistent. I hold on the contrary that we must use and arrange all available material (and that of course includes every available suggestion) so that the reality qualified by it all will answer, so far as is possible, to our criterion of a harmonious system. On this point I refer specially to Chapters xvi, xxiv, and xxvii, the doctrines of which, I venture to add, should not be taken as non-existent where my views are in question. (iii.) I do not think that where a further alternative is possible a disjunction is complete. |561| But I have always held, and do hold, J. S. Mill’s idea of the Unmeaning as a third possibility to be the merest nonsense. (iv) I do not admit but deny the assumption that, if our knowledge could be consistent, it could then be made from the outside to contradict itself. (v.) And I reject the idea that, so far as our knowledge is absolute, we can rationally entertain the notion of its being or becoming false. Any such idea, I have tried to show, is utterly unmeaning. And on the other hand, so far as our knowledge is liable to error, it is so precisely so far as it does not answer to the criterion. (vi.) Finally I would submit that the sense in which this or that writer uses such principles as those of Identity and Contradiction, and the way in which he develops them, cannot always safely be assumed a priori by any critic.
  This is all I think it could be useful for me to say in this connection, except that I would end this Note with an expression of regret The view adopted by Mr. Hobhouse as to the nature of the criterion has, it seems to me (I dare say quite wrongly), so very much that is common to myself, as well as also to others, † that I am the more sorry that I have not the advantage of his criticizm on something which I could recognize as in any degree my own.

† Mr. Hobhouse seems to me (I suppose mistakenly) to adopt somehow in the end, as the criterion of truth and reality, the idea of a consistent all-inclusive system. If and so far as he does this, I naturally think he is right, but I think he would be wrong if and so far as he simply assumed this principle as ultimate. But as to what his view in the end actually is I could not venture an opinion, partly perhaps because I have been able to give but a limited time to his work.

1 I may mention that in this chapter I am, perhaps even more than elsewhere, indebted to Hegel.

  |319| 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 perceived to consist in ideal construction. It is ideal, not indeed wholly (Chapter xxiii), but still essentially. And such a series is but appearance; it is not absolute, but relative; and, like all other appearance, 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 deliberately diverges from this rude essay. And, without considering further the exploded claim set up by temporal fact, we may deal generally with the question of degrees in reality and truth.

  We have already perceived the main nature of the process of thinking. 1 Thought essentially consists 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 consent. But by embracing this separation, and by 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 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 stand for what it means; but these two aspects in the end prove incompatible. There is still a difference, unremoved, between the subject and the predicate, a difference which, while it persists, shows a failure in thought, but which, if removed, would wholly destroy the special essence of thinking.  We may put this otherwise by laying down that any categorical judgment must be false. The subject 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.

1 Chapters xv. and xvi.; compare Mind, No. 47.

And hence all our judgments, |320| 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 to fall inside even a new and conditional predicate. 1
  It is however better, I am now persuaded, not to say that every judgment is hypothetical. 2 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 complement 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 difference falls outside our 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 redistributed 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. 3 And hence our judgment, always but to a varying extent, must in the end be called conditional.

1 I may, perhaps, refer here to my Principles of Logic. Even metaphysical statements about the Absolute, I would add, are not strictly categorical. See below Chapter xxvii.

2 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.

3 Hence in the end we must be held to have asserted the unknown. It is however better not 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. Logic, I., pp. 261-4. But, if in the end they remain impure, and must be qualified always by an unspecified background, that circumstance must be taken into consideration.

But with this we have arrived at the meeting-ground of error and truth. There will be no truth which is entirely |321| true, just as there will be no error 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 always to degree. Our judgments, in a word, can never reach as far as perfect truth, and must be content merely to enjoy more or less of Validity. I do 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 extents, because containing in themselves less or more of its nature. They are its representatives, worse 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 standard. 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 and always imperfect. We have next to see that, though failing of perfection, all 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-subsisting individuality; and I have endeavoured to show, in Chapter xx, what individuality means. Assuming that the reader has recalled the main 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 mark of expansion and all-inclusiveness. And these two characteristics are diverse aspects of a single principle.

* pp. 321-3. The argument in these pages, the reader will observe, depends on the truth of certain doctrines. (a) A merely external relation has no meaning or existence, for a relation must (at least to some extent) qualify its terms, (b) Relations imply a unity in which they subsist, and apart from which they have no meaning or existence. (c) Every kind of diversity, both terms and relations alike are adjectives of one reality, which exists in them and without which they are nothing. These doctrines are taken as having been already proved both in the body of this work and in the Appendix.
  From this basis we can go on to argue as follows. Everything finite, because somehow together in one whole with everything else, must, because this whole is one above the level of bare feeling, coexist with the rest at the very least relationally. Hence everything must somehow, at least to some extent, be qualified from the outside. And this qualification, because only relational (to put it here in this way), cannot fall wholly inside the thing. Hence the finite is internally inconsistent with and contradicts itself. And whether the external qualification is merely conjoined in some unintelligible way to its inner nature, or is connected with that intrinsically—may for our present purpose be ignored. For anyhow, however it comes about, the finite as a fact will contradict itself.
  From the side of the Whole the same result is manifest For that is itself at once both any one finite and also what is beyond. And, because no ‘together’ can in the end be merely external, therefore the Whole within the finite carries that outside itself.
  By an attempt to fall back upon mere feeling below relations nothing would be gained. For with the loss of the relations, and with the persistence of the unity, even the appearance of independence on the part of the diversity is gone. And again feeling is self-transcendent, and is perfected mainly by way of relations, and always in a Whole that both is above them and involves them (p. 583).
  By an attempt to fall back upon mere feeling below relations nothing would be gained. For with the loss of the relations, and with the persistence of the unity, even the appearance of independence on the part of the diversity is gone. And again feeling is self-transcendent, and is perfected mainly by way of relations, and always in a Whole that both is above them and involves them (p. 522-23).
  The way to refute the above would be, I presume, to show (a) that merely external relations have in the end, and as ultimate facts, a meaning and reality, and to show (b) that it is possible to think the togetherness of the terms and the external relations for somehow, I suppose, they are together—without a self-contradiction, manifest directly or through an infinite process of seeking relations between relations and terms.

That which contradicts itself, in the first place, jars, because the whole, immanent within it, drives its parts |322| into collision. And the way to find harmony, as we have seen, is to redistribute these discrepancies in a wider arrangement. But, in the second place, harmony is incompatible with restriction and finitude. For that which is not all-inclusive 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. Whatever it fails to include within its own nature, must be related to it by the whole, and related externally. Now these extrinsic relations, on the one hand, fall outside of itself, but, upon the other hand, 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. 1 But, on the contrary, the expansion of the element should increase harmony, for it should bring these external relations within the inner substance. 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 system. The two aspects, of extension 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.

1 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.

  Hence to be more or less true, and to be more or less real, is to be separated by an interval, smaller or greater, from all-inclusiveness or self-consistency. Of two given appearances the one more wide, or more harmonious, is more real. |323| 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 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 dissolved, 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 falsehoods. 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 adjectives of the Real, but are not judgments about it. The discussion of this objection falls, perhaps, outside the main scope of my work, but I should like briefly to point out that it rests on a mistake. In the first |324| place every judgment, whether positive or negative, and however frivolous its character, makes an assertion about Reality. 1, * And the content asserted cannot, as we have seen, be altogether an error, though its ultimate truth may quite transform its original meaning. And, in the second place, 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 qualification 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, undefined 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. 2
  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 further reflection, we should find that our general account will hold good. The imaginary always is regarded as an adjective of the real.

1 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. Cf. Mind, N. S., No. 60.

* I may remark here that I am still persuaded that there is in the end no such thing as the mere entertainment of an idea, and that I, for example, went wrong when in my book on Logic I took this to exist. It seems to be, on the contrary, the abstraction of an aspect which by itself does not exist. See Mind, N. S., No. 60.

2 See Mr. Bosanquet’s Logic, Introduction, and the same author’s Knowledge and Reality, pp. 148-155.

|325| But, in referring it, (a) we distinguish, with more or less consciousness, the regions to which it is, and to which it is not, applicable. And (b) we are aware, in different degrees, of the amount of supplementation and rearrangement, which our idea would require before it reached truth. These are two aspects of the same principle, and I will deal briefly with each.
  (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, conjoined merely by coexistence 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 bewilderment. The real world, perhaps consciously, may be identified with the spatial system which we construct. This is ‘actual fact’, and everything else may be set apart as mere thought, or as mere imagination or feeling, all equally unreal. But, if so, against our wills these banished regions, nevertheless, present themselves as the worlds of feeling, 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. We treat the imaginary |326| 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. 1
  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 refinement, 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 real 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 I desire is not consciously assumed 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.
  (b) 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, unconscious.

1 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 psychology, has been thrown into prominence by recent experiments in hypnotism.

This same want of consciousness, in varying |327| amounts, is visible also in our way of applying the predicate. 1 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 rearrangement. 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 suppositions 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, 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 appearance 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 adjective of the Real, they would require rearrangement. We have to enquire how far, in other words, these contents are, or are not, self-consistent and systematic.

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 conditional and conditioned. On this point see farther Chapter xxvii.

And then, on the other side, we must have regard to the extent of time, or space, or both, which our appearance |328| occupies. 1 Other things being equal, whatever spreads more widely in space, or again lasts longer in time, is therefore more real. But (b), 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 more 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 determined by exclusion from a wider area. Again the generalization nearer sense, being fuller of irrelevancy, 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. And it is applied always under the double form of inclusiveness and harmony. 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 consisted merely of phenomenal events, and of the laws that somehow reign above them. And in our everyday 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.

1 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. 333).

It is obvious that here the two features, of self-sufficiency and |329|self-transcendence, 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 example and instance of an universal truth, the fact and the law are still essentially 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 still for further uses and fresh applications of our standard. In the will of the individual, or of the community, so far as adequately carried out and expressing itself in outward 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 realisation, but which from their nature cannot be realized in a finite personality. And, once more here, our standard must be called in when we endeavour, as we must, to form a comparative estimate. For, apart from the success or failure of the individual’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 appearances 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, |330| that I am not undertaking to set out completely the different aspects of the world; nor am I 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 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 without an intellectual standard? And I think we are driven to this alternative. We must either be incapable 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 significance, 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 |331| representation, 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 separation of worth from reality and truth would mutilate our nature, and could end only in irrational compromise 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 pleasure, 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 favourable 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 tried to introduce some sort of unity and meaning into our world. 1
  But if to make mere feeling our one standard is in the end impossible, if we cannot rest in the intolerable confusion of a double test and control, nor can relapse 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.

1 Such an attitude, beside being impracticable, would however still be internally inconsistent. It breaks down in the position which it gives to truth. The understanding, 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 tendencies. And this is clearly to end in mere momentary caprice, and in anarchy.

We must allow to every appearance alike its own |332| degree of reality, if not also of truth, 1 and we must everywhere estimate this degree by the application of our single standard. I am not here attempting 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 ignorance 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-existence; and this, given plurality and relations, means an individual system. Now we have shown that no perfect system can possibly be finite, because any limitation 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. 2 And the more an 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 Universe. We are then forced to perceive both the inconsistency of our predicates, and the large extent of outer supplement which we must add, if we wish to make them true. Hence the amount of either wideness 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 follow if its defects were made good.

1 Whether, and in what sense, every appearance of the Reality has truth, is a point taken up later in Chapter xxvi.

2 The reader must not forget here that the inconsistency and distraction, which cannot be felt, is therefore the greatest (p. 322). Feeling is itself a unity and a solution, however incomplete.

The more an appearance, in being corrected, is transmuted and destroyed, the |333| less reality can such an appearance contain; or, to put it otherwise, the less genuinely does it represent the Real. And on this principle we succeeded in attaching a clear sense to that nebulous phrase ‘Validity’.

  And this standard, in principle at least, is applicable 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 consciousness, has also an outer sphere or halo of effects. And in some low sense these effects make a part of, or at least belong to, its being. And with facts of perception their extent 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 existence, 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 personal members of a will carried out, submits itself naturally to our test. We 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 have an intenser unity of its own; but, on the side of temporal existence, it cannot possibly exhibit itself as such. The higher the principle, and 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. But, just for this reason, such a principle cannot be handled or seen, nor is it in any way given to outward or inward perception. It |334| is only the meaner realities which can ever be so 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-perception as the one known reality. And there is a view which endeavours, on the other side, to consider appearance in time as something 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 meager 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 admissible 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 which have branched from this stem. The first of these, perceiving that the series of events is essential, concludes from this ground that mere sense, either outward or inward, is the one reality. Or, if it stops short of this, it still argues that to be real is to be, as such, perceptible. Because, that is, appearance in the temporal series is found necessary for reality 1—a premise which is true—an unconscious passage is made, from this truth, to a vicious conclusion.

1 Compare here Chapters xix and xxiii.

To appear is construed to imply appearance |335| always, so to speak, in person. And nothing is allowed to be real, unless it can be given bodily, and can be revealed, within one piece of the series. But this conclusion is radically erroneous. No perception ever, as we have seen clearly, has a character contained within itself. In order to be fact at all, each presentation must exhibit ideality, or in other words transcendence of self; and that which appears at any one moment, is, as such, self-contradictory. 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 conclusion is, once more, drawn from this basis. But the error now proceeds in an opposite 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 and is internally discordant; while, if, further, we attempt to qualify the universe by our mere ideal abstract, and to attach this content to the Reality 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 consequence 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 exist, and that to be realized in time is not always to be visible by any sense, we have made ourselves secure against |336| the worst of errors. From this we are soon led to our principle of degrees in truth and reality. Our world and our life need then no longer 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. 1 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 suppose that mere thought 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, 2 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 presented basis that we construct our system of phenomena 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.

1 The position which, in estimating value, is to be assigned to pleasure and pain will be discussed in Chapter xxv.

2 The series, in its proper character, is, of course, an ideal construction. But we may disregard that here.

But, indirectly or directly, every known element must be connected with its sequence of events, and, at least in some sense, must |337| 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, it would not gain by an addition made from the outside. And, here in particular, thought’s first object, in its pursuit 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 in, and is determined by, an enormous construction of things. And to suppose that the concrete context of these relations in no sense qualifies its inner content, or that this qualification is a matter of indifference to thought, 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 related 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 system. 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 destroyed, 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 |338| 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 perceptible fact; or, in other words, it is compulsorily qualified by a wider area of alien and destructive relations. I have emphasized ‘if other things remain equal’, for this restriction is important. There is imagination which is higher, and more true, and most emphatically more real, than any single fact of sense. And this brings us back to our old distinction. Every truth must appear, and must subordinate 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 necessary appearances of art or religion, the same conclusion 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 dominate the extremities more widely; but it is not to appear there except 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 merged, is 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 possesses 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 |339| various points of interest, and, in the first place, to consider some difficulties handed on to this 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. We have seen that an idea is more true in proportion as it approaches Reality. And it approaches Reality in proportion as it grows internally more complete. And from this we possibly might conclude 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 inconsistent 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 alien to itself, we cannot say either that, by itself, it can arrive at completion, or that, when perfected, it, as such, any longer exists.
  And, with this, we may advance to the consideration of several questions. We found (Chapter xxii) that parts of the physical world might exist, and yet might exist, for us, only in the shape of thought. But we realized also that in the Absolute, where the contents of all finite selves are fused, these thought-existences must, in some way, be recombined 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 conditional; 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 they 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 |340| real, must transcend themselves. They have to pass beyond the world of mere thought. And we have seen, in the second place, that every idea must possess a certain amount both of truth and reality. 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 ‘potential existence’, and we may pass on to consider the meaning of this phrase. The words ‘potential’, ‘latent’, and ‘nascent’, and we may add ‘virtual’ 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 overestimate the service rendered by these terms to some writers on philosophy. 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 following sense. We may mean by it that something somehow appears already in a given point of time, although it does not as yet appear fully or in its own proper character. I |341| 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 be quite gone. That part of the conditions which appears at present, must produce causally the rest; and, in order for this to happen, foreign matter must be added. But, if so much is added that the individuality of this first appearance is wholly destroyed, or is even overwhelmed and swamped—‘potential existence’ is inapplicable. Thus the death of a man may result from the lodgment 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 condition 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 proper 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 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 becomes a fowl, is thus a legitimate application of potential existence. On the other hand to |342| 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 misuse of the term, which has been advocated by a so-called ‘System of Philosophy’.
  Under certain conditions, then, the idea of potential 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. 1 This is no mere speculative refinement, but a difficulty experienced in working; and we met it lately while enquiring into the body and soul (Chapter xxiii). 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 sufferance. We are, in brief, placed between two dangers. If, with anything finite, you refuse wholly to predicate 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.

1 And this is impossible; see Chapters vi and xviii.

  And, once driven to enter on this course, you are hurried away beyond all landmarks. You are forced indefinitely to go on expanding the subject of your predicates, until at last it has disappeared into something quite different. And hence, in employing potential existence, we are, so to speak, on an inclined plane. We start by saying, ‘A is such that, under probable conditions, its nature will develop into B; and therefore, because of this, |343| 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 will remain, in the end, a widespread source of confusion and danger. The more a writer feels himself led naturally to have recourse to this phrase, the better cause he probably has for at least attempting to avoid it.

  It may throw light on several problems, if we consider further the general nature of Possibility and Chance. 1 We touched on this subject above, when we enquired if complete possibility is the same as reality (p. 339). Our answer to that question may be summed up thus: Possibility implies the separation of thought from existence; but, on the other hand, since these two extremes are essentially one, each, while divided from the other, is internally defective. Hence if the possible could be completed 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 consequence, therefore, be no longer possibility.
  The possible implies always the partial division of idea from reality. It is, properly, the consequence 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. But this last qualification is necessary.

1 On Possibility compare Chapter xxvii, and Principles of Logic, Book I, Chap. vii.

The possible, itself, is not real; but its essence partly transcends ideas, |344| and 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 any element, not included within such a universal, is, in relation to that universal, bare fact, and so relative chance. Chance, in other words, would not be actual chance, if it were not also more. It is viewed in negative relation to some idea, but 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 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 understood in these diverse relations. Possibility and chance, we may say, stand to one another thus. An actual fact more or less ignores the ideal complement 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. The 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 completion. It fluctuates, therefore, with the various conditions which are taken as necessary 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 possibility. I take an idea, which, in the |345| 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. And, without this, the idea would cease altogether to be possible.

  What are we to say then about the possibility, or 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 connection 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 possibility we are supposed to be without this knowledge. There, merely because I do not 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. |346| 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 penetration 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, I am without a certain perception, I am to call my idea compatible. On the ground of my sheer ignorance, 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 possesses, 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 possible, 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. 1

1 It may be worth while to notice that Possibility, if you try to make it unconditional, is the same thing as one sense of Inconceivability 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 wrongly 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 actually incompatible with the Reality, as de facto we have the Reality in our minds. Each of these ideas, in short, is viciously based on privation, and each is a different aspect of the same self-contradictory complex.

  |347| 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 relations in which it stands, the absolutely contingent would thus be utterly determined from the outside. And so, by consequence, chance would involve complete 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 perceive in its content the internal relations to what is beyond it—relations which, because they are ideal, are 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 penetrates 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 undetermined, 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 |348| 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 incompletely, 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 connection; 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. 1 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 necessity, or as unconditional possibility. The possible must in part be really, and that means internally, necessary. And the same, again, is true of the 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.

1 The identity, in the end, of possibility with chance, and of chance with external or brute necessity, has instructive consequences. 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 apprehended, it loses all plausibility. But the popular moralist will always exist by not knowing what he means.

  We are led from this to ask whether there are degrees of possibility and contingency, and our answer to this question must be affirmative. To be more or less possible, and to be more or less true, and intrinsically necessary, |349|—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 outside 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 incorrect 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 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 argument, it is a conclusion drawn from the presence of some thought to the reality of that which the thought contains. Now of course anyone at a glance can see how futile this might be. If you identify reality with spatial or even temporal existence, and understand by thought the idea of some distinct finite object, nothing |350| 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 existence. 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 simply this, that, standing on one side of such a whole, you find yourself 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 may be said to argue to the character of the Real. Since Reality is qualified by thought, 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 irrefragable.
  The real failure of the ontological proof lies elsewhere. 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 that every predicate, as such, is true of Reality, is evidently false. We have learnt, on the contrary, that truth and |351| 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 rearrangement. And its 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 existing 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 finite matter. It is used of the Absolute, and, if confined to that, will be surely legitimate. We are, I 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 be 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 premise, is destroyed by the conclusion; and hence the premise itself could not have been true. This objection is valid, and it is not less valid because it holds, in the end, of every possible argument. But the objection disappears when we recognize the genuine character of the process. This consists in the correction by the Whole of an |352| attempted isolation on the part of its members. And, whether you begin from the side of Existence or of Thought, the process will remain essentially the same. There is a subject and a predicate, 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 sense, 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. 1 Every idea, 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 existences of ideas, as psychical events, is for the most part a task falling outside metaphysics. 2 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 predicate 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. 3, * On the other hand, at least in most cases, to think of anger is, to however slight an extent, to be angry; and, usually, ideas of pleasures and pains are, as events, themselves pleasures and pains in fact. Wherever the idea can be merely one aspect of a single presentation, there we can say that the ideal content exists, and is an actual event.

1 Principles of Logic, pp. 67-9.

2 The question is one for psychology, and I may perhaps be permitted to remark that, with regard 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 made use of.

3 Compare Mind, xxxiv, pp. 286-90, and xliii, pp. 313-14.

* To the references given here add Mind, N.S., iv, pp. 20, 21 and pp. 225, 226.

|353| And it is possible, in such cases, to apply a semblance of the ontological proof. Because, that is, the existence of the fact is necessary, 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’. Immediate 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, its spuriousness is manifest. For (a), in the first place, the ideal content is not moved from within. It does not of itself seek completion through existence, and so imply that by internal necessity. 1, * There is no intrinsic connection, there is but a mere found conjunction, between the two sides of idea and existence. And hence the argument, 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 (b), 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 argument is grossly mistaken.

1 So far as it did this, it would have to expand itself to its own destruction.

* p. 324, footnote. I may remark here that I am still persuaded that there is in the end no such thing as the mere entertainment of an idea, and that I, for example, went wrong when in my book on Logic I took this to exist. It seems to be, on the contrary, the abstraction of an aspect which by itself does not exist. See Mind, N. S., No. 60.

For the genuine subject is Reality, while the genuine predicate asserts of this every character |354| contained in the ostensible predicate and subject. The idea, qualified as existing 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, inconsistent with itself, and contradicts its proper subject. We have in brief, by considering the spurious ontological 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 understanding 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 inspection 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 and existence.

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Chapter XXV. Goodness

|355-402| Good and Evil and their degrees are not illusions, but still are appearances, 355-56. Goodness, what, 356. The merely pleasant, why not good, 356-57. Pleasure by itself not good, 357-60. Good is not the satisfied will, but is in general the approved, 360-61. How far is it ‘desirable’? 361-62. Goodness is a one-sided inconsistent aspect of perfection, 362-63. The Absolute both is and is not good, 363-65. Goodness, more specially, as Self-realization, 365-66, Its double aspect as Self-sacrifice and Self-assertion, 366-67. What these are, 367-70. They come together but are transcended in the Absolute, 371. But popular Ethics asserts each as ultimate, and hence necessarily fails, 372-80. Relativity of Goodness, 3800-81. Goodness as inner Morality, 381-83, is inconsistent and ends in nothing or in evil, 383-86. The demands of Morality carry it beyond itself into Religion, 386-88. What this is, and how it promises satisfaction, 389-91. It proves inconsistent, and is an appearance which passes beyond itself, 391-97; but it is no illusion, 397-99. The practical problem as to religious truth, 399-401. Religion and Philosophy, 402-02.

  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 appearances. They are one-sided aspects, each overruled and transmuted in the Whole. And, after the discussions of our last chapter, we should be better able to appreciate their position and value. As with truth and error, so with good and bad, the opposition is not absolute. For, to some extent 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 reach or even oppose—the lower truth and lower goodness become sheer error and evil. The Absolute is perfect in all its detail, it is equally true and good throughout. But, upon the other side, each distinction 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 might approach without misgiving the diverse worlds of 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. But, even with this, I can but touch on certain features of the subject; |356| and I must deal chiefly with those which are likely to be urged as objections to our doctrine. 1

  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 contentment. 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 each the identity, of idea and existence. In truth we start with existence, 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 goodness and truth contain the separation of idea and existence, and involve a process in time. And, therefore, each is appearance, and but a one-sided aspect of the Real. 2
  But the good (it may be objected) need involve no idea. Is not the pleasant, as such, good? Is not at any rate any feeling in which we rest with satisfaction, at once good in itself? I answer these questions in the negative. Good, in the proper sense, implies the fulfilment of desire; at least, if you consider anything apart from the realisation of a suggested idea, it is at a stage below goodness.

1 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 volition, 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.

2 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 real. But on the relation of these aspects further see the next chapter.

Such |357| 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 hardly 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. Goodness and truth may be there potentially, but as yet neither of them is there.
  And that an idea is required for goodness seems fairly clear, but with regard to desire there is more room for doubt. I may approve, in the sense 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 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 extreme 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 important is to insist that the presence of an idea is essential to goodness.
  And for this reason we must not admit that 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 generally good, if we will leave |358| 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 pronounce. 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 that the more pleasant and the better were one, its position would be altered. For, 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 pleasant. 1 And we have included pleasure as an essential element in our idea of perfection (Chapter xx). But it will hardly follow from this that nothing 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 imperfect and worthless; and you may show how, this one being added, they all once more gain reality and worth. And hence of everyone 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 hand, because we desire it? 2

1 I must refer here to Mind, No. 49.

2 The object of any idea has a tendency to 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 pleasantness of an idea, as my psychical state, can be transferred to its object We have to ask 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 1sometimes that it is pleasant only because it is there? The discussion of these matters would lead to psychological subtleties, which here we may neglect.

And we may ask the same question as to the |359| 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 I ought, or does the ‘because’ only hold in the opposite direction? And is an object beautiful 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 questions which threaten 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 condition; 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 coexists 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 |360| connection between pleasure and desire. If the one coexistence is mere accident and a conjunction which happens, then why not also, and as much, the other? But, if we agree 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 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 this otherwise by urging that, even if Hedonism were true, there would be no possible way in which its truth could be shown. 1, *

  Passing from this mistake I will notice another doctrine from which we must dissent. There is a temptation to identify goodness with the realisation of the Will; and, on the strength of a certain assumption, 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 satisfaction of desire can be found as well as made 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. 2

1 I have noticed above (p. 331) the want of thoroughness displayed by Hedonism in its attitude towards the intellect. See more below, p. 384. For further criticizm of details I may refer to my Ethical Studies, and again to a pamphlet that was called Mr. Sidgwick’s Hedonism. Compare Mind, 49, p. 36.

* On the subject of Hedonism I would add references to the International Journal of Ethics, Vol. iv, pp. 384-6 and Vol. v, pp. 225-226.

2 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 stating that I consider these to be products and subsequent to pleasure. To say that they are made solely by pleasure and pain would be incorrect. But it would be much more correct than to take the latter always as being a reaction from them.

  |361| I may perhaps express our general view by saying that the good is coextensive with approbation. But I should add that approbation is to be taken in 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 speculation 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. 1

1 For the sake of convenience I assume that approval implies desire, but in certain cases the assumption would hardly be correct (p. 357). But approval always must imply that the idea is pleasant. Apart from, or in abstraction from, that feature, we should have mere recognition. And, though recognition tends always to become approval, yet in idea they are 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 coextensive with goodness is that approval implies usually a certain degree of reflection, and suggests the judging from an abstracted and impersonal point of view. In this way approbation may be found, for instance, to be, so far, incompatible 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 theoretical approval will be touched on further in Chapter xxvi. Approval, of course, is practical where the idea is of something to be done.

  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 seems, hence, to imply that the good might be good, and |362| 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. 1
  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. 357). This use of "desirable" would call attention to an important 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 fix 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.

1 If pleasure were the only thing that could be desired, it would, hence, not follow straight from this that pleasure is desirable 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’.

  If we seek to know what is goodness, we find it always as the adjective of something not itself. Beauty, truth, pleasure, and sensation are all things that are good. We desire them all, and all can serve as types or ‘norms’ by |363| 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. For 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 therefore 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 remade.
  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 partly 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 these features is necessary, and each is inconsistent with the other. And the resolution of this difference between idea and existence 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 higher character, in which, becoming perfect, it would be merged.
  Hence obviously the good is not the 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 not its appearances. But (as we have seen throughout) such a truth is itself partial and false, since the Absolute appears in its phenomena and is real nowhere outside them. We |364| 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. And, since in that consummation idea and existence are not lost but are brought into harmony, the Whole therefore is still good. And 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 perfect which is separated from perfection by a smaller interval. And the interval is measured by the amount of rearrangement 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 phenomena. For an element is lower as being either more narrow or less harmonious. And we perceived, 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 extension and harmony. 1 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 determined from the outside cannot internally be harmonious, while on the other hand, if it became all-inclusive, it would have become also concordant.

1 In estimating pains and pleasures we consider not merely their degree and extent, but also their effects, and generally all those qualities with which they are inseparably connected.

In its application this single |365| principle tends naturally 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 meaning 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 existence 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 become the realized end or completed will. It is now an idea which not only has an answering content 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 be confined to the realm of ends or of self-realisation. It will be restricted, in other words, to what is commonly called the sphere of morality.
  For we must here take self-realisation 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. There is to be, in short, no self-realisation except that of souls.
  |366| {relative} Goodness then, at present, is the realisation 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 that more restricted sense in which morality is inward. Goodness is, here, to be the carrying out by the individual of his idea of perfection. And we must go on to show briefly 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 imaginable 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. 1

  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 features must coincide (Chapter xxiv); but in judging of phenomena we are constantly forced to apply them separately. I 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 goodness, I will proceed to lay stress on this divergence in application. The aspects of extent and of harmony come together in the end, but no less certainly in that end goodness, as such, will have perished.

1 This applies emphatically to any specific feeling of goodness or morality.

1 See Ethical Studies, pp. 222-4; and compare here below, p. 381-2, and p. 469.

And his intellectual, aesthetic, and moral development, in short the whole ideal side of his nature, is clearly built |369| up out of elements which he shares with other souls. Hence the individual’s end in self-advancement 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.
  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 individual perfection, then my conduct is palpably not self-sacrifice, and may be opposed to it. It is self-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-sacrifice, whether I am living ‘for others’ or not. 1 But self-sacrifice is also, and on the other hand, a form of self-realisation. The wider end, which is aimed at, is, visibly or invisibly, reached; and in that pursuit 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 beyond 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.

1 I am, for the present purpose, taking no account of immorality or of the self-sacrifice which seems failure.

But in self-sacrifice the organ aims at realising some feature |370| 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, rounded, and concrete. It is willing to see itself abstract and mutilated, over-specialized, or stunted, or even destroyed. But this actual defect it can make 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 described, 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 coincidence 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 repeat this) they are equally 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 perfected, 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 reason, that the finite, realising itself, should not also transcend 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, appears natural and necessary. And each of these pursuits, in general and in the abstract, |371| 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 unaccomplished 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, unattainable. 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-realisation. For, even if we take that ideal to be perfect and to be somehow completely fulfilled, yet, after all, he himself 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, he, 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 phenomenal, and therefore self-contradictory. And therefore, 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, everything, by addition and by rearrangement, 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, |372| 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 abstractions, 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 bewilderment 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 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 suppose 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, |373| however satisfactory the means by which I come to possess it, is most assuredly not the fulfilment of my desire. For the desire of human beings (this is surely a commonplace) 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. For 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 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. For 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 |374| endings, but extend themselves indefinitely beyond himself into an endless 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 pursue 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 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 criticizm, it plumes itself on suggesting cautious questions, doubts which dogmatically assume the truth of its coarsest prejudices. Nowhere are these infirmities illustrated 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 these 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 add a few words on these developments.
  |375| (i) The good may be identified with self-sacrifice, and self-assertion may, therefore, be totally excluded. 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-realisation, and it inevitably 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 inconsistent 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 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 included, or should add to a collection in which he may share—is certainly not pure self-sacrifice. And a maxim that each should aim purely at his neighbour’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. 1
  (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.

1 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.

Not |376| only is the physical basis too shifting, but the contents too essentially 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 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 assumption that the individual remains what he is when you have cut off his relations, is very much what the vulgar understand by criticizm. But, when such a question is discussed, it must be answered quite otherwise. The contents, asserted in the individual’s self-seeking, necessarily extend beyond his private limits. A maxim, therefore, merely to pursue one’s own advantage is, taken strictly, inconsistent. And a principle which contradicts itself is, once more, not reasonable. 1

1 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 haphazard and accidentally. One may 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 another aspect which contradicts ‘merely one’s own’, the assertion is false. And it is, I presume, a moral platitude that selfish action always must concern more than the actor.

  (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 somehow to be |377| 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 discrepancy 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 examination that each finite end, taken by itself, is reasonable; 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 imperfectly begun, which, when completed, must take us beyond goodness altogether. But for popular Ethics, as we saw, not only goodness itself, 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 understand how either by itself could ever have been ultimate. 1

1 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 to be qualified by the other or the whole, for 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.

|378| In short, the bare conjunction of independent reals is an idea which contradicts itself. But of this naturally Common Sense has no knowledge 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 therefore 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 conclusion, 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 perfection. 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 really 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 deus ex machina, 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 their own nature, they are not, may summarily be dismissed as an exploded absurdity. 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 |379| be made worth my while to be benevolent—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 machina refuses to work. Little can be brought in by this venerable artifice except a fresh source of additional collision and perplexity. 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 comprehension. An honest and truth-seeking scepticism 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 Common Sense from first to last is dogmatic. It takes for granted, first, without examination that certain doctrines are true; it then demands that this collection 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 |380| because it is baffled and perplexed, gets the name of scepticism. But a sincere scepticism, attacking without fear each particular 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 inconsistency, 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. {Relative} 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 universe. By accepting its transmutation it both realizes its own destiny and survives in the result.
  We might reach the same conclusion briefly, perhaps, 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 characters 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 positive object which is followed in opposition to the good, will unite with, and will conduce to, the ultimate goal. And the |381| conduct which seems merely bad, which appears to pursue no positive content and to exhibit no system, will in the same way become good. Both by its assertion and its negation it will subserve an overruling 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 overruled. But nothing, however 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 with goodness. 1

1 This view of morality is of course a late development, 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 hand, 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 self-esteem and self-disapprobation, or the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of a creature with itself. This feeling must begin when that creature is able to 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. The dissatisfied brooding of an animal that tor example, missed its prey, is, we may be sure, not yet moral. But it will none the less contain in rudiment that judgment 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 which 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.

The good, |382| we may be informed, is morality, and morality is inward. It does not consist in the attainment of a mere result, either outside the self or even within it. For a result must depend 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 nonmoral 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 identification 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, 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 identification 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 inconsistent with the very notion of goodness, that will be another indication that the good is but appearance. 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. 1

1 Ethical Studies, Essay IV.

But |383| 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 depend 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 admitted 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 between virtue and happiness there is an essential connection, then virtue must be redefined 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 flat 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. Beauty, riches, strength, health and fortune—everything, and, perhaps, more than everything, which could be called a human excellence—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 individuals 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 everyday morality.
  And this doctrine, when we examine it further, is found to end in nothing. Its idea is to credit a man merely with |384| 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 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 strength 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 barely 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. 1 But, once more, we cannot allow for 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. 2

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 opinion of the subject, however wrong that may be. But an intelligent view of the connection between goodness and truth is not a thing which we need expect from common Hedonism (p. 407).

2 Compare Ethical Studies, pp. 213-217.

For that intensity is determined, in the first place, by natural conditions, and, in the next |385| 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 that one does 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 indifferent. 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, though 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. Still, on the other side, we must insist that every act is a resultant from psychical conditions. 1 A formal act which is not determined by its matter, is nonsense, whether you consider that act in its origin or in its outcome. And, again, if the act is not morally characterized 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.

1 This would be denied by what is vulgarly called Free Will. That attempts to make the self or will, in abstraction from concrete 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 how 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 chimera. Certainly no writer, who respects himself, can be called on any longer to treat it seriously (p. 348).

  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 professes to be moral. Morality |386| has degenerated into self-approbation which only is formal, and which therefore is false. It has become the hollow conscience 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 sentiment 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. 1 For the bad, which admits not only that 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 beyond itself. We must at last have come to the end, when it has been proclaimed a moral duty to be 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 problem can be solved only when the various stages 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.

1 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.

  |387| 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 confine virtue to what is commonly called moral conduct, 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 external, or, in other words, as we have seen, it pursues the unmeaning. For the excellence which barely is inner is nothing at all. We must either allow then that physical excellences are good, or we must be content to find virtue not realized anywhere. 1 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 independent existence. Morality has proved unreal unless it stands on, and vitally consists in, gifts naturally good. And thus we have been forced to 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.

1 If we take such a virtue as courage, and deny its moral 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 virtues which, in a sense, rise above mere goodness. This from the view of morality proper is of course impossible.

  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 |388| 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. Morality in brief calls for an unattainable unity of its aspects, and, in its search for this, it naturally is led beyond itself into a higher form of goodness. It ends in what we may call religion. 1

1 The origin of religion is a question which does not concern us here. Religion appears to have two roots, fear and admiration or approval. 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 enquire 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 on mere misunderstanding. That which is mainly intellectual, or mainly aesthetic, would probably be admitted in the end to fall outside religion. But we come at last, I should say, to a stubborn discrepancy. There are those who would call religious any kind of practical relation to the ‘other world’, or to the supersensible generally. The question, for instance, as to life after death, or as to the possibility of communication with what are called ‘spirits’, seems to 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 to have religion, you must have a relation of a special and particular kind. And they would add that, where you have this relation, whether towards 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-rapping or witchcraft, is really not in itself in the very least religious. And it is only, they would urge, because per accidens our feelings to the unseen are generally (not always) religious, that religion has been partly narrowed and partly extended |389| 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 reflection. 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. That 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 are many such objects, we are polytheists. 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 divinity. It is a common phrase in life that one may make a God of this or that person, object, or pursuit; and in such a case our attitude, it seems to me, must be called religious. This is the case often, for example, in sexual or in parental love. But to fix the exact point at which religion begins, and where it ends, would hardly be possible.
  In this chapter I am 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 pursuit, can exist side by side. But in this highest sense of religion there can be but one object. And again, when religion is fully developed, this object must be good. For towards anything else, although we feared it, we should now entertain feelings of revolt, of dislike, and even of contempt. There would not any longer be that moral prostration which is implied in all religion.

  In this higher mode of consciousness I am not suggesting that a full solution is found. For religion 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.
  |390|For religion all is the perfect expression of a supreme will, 1 and all things therefore are good. Everything imperfect and evil, the conscious bad will itself, is taken up into and subserves this absolute 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 destroyed, while the good in various degrees can still preserve its own character. Goodness, like truth, we saw was supplemented rather than wholly overruled. 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 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 overmastering perfection, this for the finite being is self-consciousness of itself as perfect. And in the others it finds once more the same perfection realized. For where a whole is complete in finite beings, which know themselves to be elements and members of its system, this is 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 appearance.
  But, on the other hand, religion must not pass wholly beyond goodness, and it therefore still maintains 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 remain evil is to be overruled, and, as such, to perish utterly. Hence the ideal perfection of the self serves to increase its hostility towards its own imperfection and evil.

1 As to the ultimate truth of this belief, see the following chapter.

The self at once struggles to be |391| perfect, and 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 is, we may say, something else. Evil assuredly contributes to the good of the whole, but it contributes something which in that whole is quite transformed from its own nature. And while in badness itself there are, in one sense, no degrees, there are, in another sense, certainly degrees 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 contribution 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 contradiction remains. For, if the whole is still good, it is not harmonious; and, if it has gone beyond goodness, it has carried us also beyond religion. The whole is at once actually to be good, and, at the same time, is actually to make itself good. Neither its perfect goodness, nor 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 |392| object must, and 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 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; but, because it is practical, it is at the same time a making, none the less, as if one did not 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 not 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. We 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 professions. The same form of self-deception plays its part in the ceremonies of religion.
  This criticizm might naturally be pursued into indefinite detail, but it is sufficient for us here to have established the main principle. The religious consciousness rests on the felt unity of unreduced opposites; 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 |393| 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 forget the difference between its private will and the Good. And, on the other side, if it emphasizes this latter difference, it is then threatened with a lapse into bare morality. But again if, flying 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 completely indifferent. It idly dreams its life away in the quiet world of divine inanity, or, forced into action 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 hypocrisy. But we need not enter into the pathology of the religious consciousness. The man who has passed, however little, behind the scenes of the religious life, must have had his 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, religion 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 irreligious. 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 a mode and an expression at a different stage of the good; and the |394| good, as we have found, is a self-contradictory appearance of the Absolute.

  It may be instructive to bring out the same inconsistency 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. He does not merely ‘stand in relation’, but is moved only by his opposite, and indeed, apart from that inward working, could not 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 finitude. God is therefore taken, again, as transcending this external relation. He wills and knows 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 stages and forms, wills and knows itself throughout. It parts itself into opposite terms with a relation between them; but in the same breath it denies this provisional sundering, and it asserts and feels in either term the inward presence of |395| the other. And so religion consists in a practical oscillation, and expresses itself only by the means of theoretical compromise. It would shrink perhaps from the statement that God loves and enjoys himself in human emotion, 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 conflicting 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 nonsense or blasphemy. Religion prefers to put forth statements which it feels are untenable, and to correct 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 himself. 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 consummation, sought by the religious consciousness, is the perfect unity of these terms. And, if so, nothing would in the end fall outside God. But to take God as the ceaseless oscillation and changing movement of the process, is out of the question. On the other side the harmony of all these discords demands, as we have shown, the alteration of their finite character. The unity implies a complete suppression of the relation, as such; but, with that suppression, religion and the good have altogether, as such, disappeared. If you identify the Absolute with God, that is not the God of religion. If again you separate 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 |396| 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 religious self-consciousness. God must certainly be conscious of himself in religion, but such self-consciousness is most imperfect. 1 For if the external relation between God and man were entirely absorbed, the separation of subject and object would, as such, have gone with it. But if again the self, which is conscious, still contains in its essence a relation between two unreduced terms, where is the unity of its selfness? 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 existence is at once essential to goodness and negated by Reality. And the process, which moves within Reality, is not Reality itself.

1 The two extremes in the human-divine self-consciousness cannot wholly unite in one concordant self. It is interesting to compare such expressions as—

  ‘I am the eye with which the Universe
  Beholds itself and knows itself divine,
  ‘They reckon ill who leave me out;
   When me they fly, I am the wings;
  I am the doubter and the doubt,
  And I the hymn the Brahmin sings’,
and
  ‘Die Sehnsucht du, und was sie stillt’,
with
  Ne suis-je pas un faux accord
  Dans la divine symphonie,
  Grace a la vorace Ironie
  Qui me secoue et qui me mord?
  Elle est dans ma voix, la criarde!
  Cest tout mon sang, ce poison noir!
  Je suis le sinistre miroir
  Ou la megere se regarde!
  Je suis la plaie et le couteau!
  Je suis le soufflet et la joue!
  Je suis les membres et la roue,
  Et la victime et le bourreau!

We may say that God is not God, till he has become |397| 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 they will not be facts. This is the prejudice which everywhere Common Sense opposes to philosophy. Common Sense is persuaded that the first rude way, in which it interprets phenomena, is ultimate truth; and neither reasoning, nor the ceaseless 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 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 concentration 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. |398| These are not religious until they have a significance which transcends their sensible finitude. 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 could exist, would most assuredly be no God. And man and God as two realities, individual and ultimate, ‘standing’ one cannot tell where, and with a relation ‘between’ them—this conjunction, we have seen, is self-contradictory, and is therefore appearance. It is a confused attempt to seize and hold in religion that Absolute, which, if it really were attained, would destroy religion. 1 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 important it may be.

1 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, unless I also am, and that, if God were not, I certainly should be nothing.

We have but |399| little notion 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 singleness 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 effect 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 subjects 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. For 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 |400| 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 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 conclusion 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 metaphysics 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, |401| 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 discussion and dogmatically, and to begin one’s work by some bald assumption, perhaps about the necessity of a ‘personal’ God, is to trifle 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 essentially 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, we have found 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 to express the complete reality of goodness through every aspect of our being. And, so far as this goes, it is at once something more, and therefore something higher, than philosophy.

  |402| Philosophy, as we shall find in our next chapter, is itself but appearance. It is but one appearance 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 undoubtedly, and incidentally it is more; but its essence clearly must be confined to intellectual activity. It is therefore but a one-sided and inconsistent 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.

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Chapter XXVI. The Absolute and its Appearances

|403-452| Object of this Chapter, 403-05. The chief modes of Experience; they all are relative, 405-06. Pleasure, Feeling, the Theoretical, the Practical, and the Æsthetic attitude are each but appearance, 406-12. And each implies the rest, 413-14. But the Unity is not known in detail. Final inexplicabilities, 414-16. The universe cannot be reduced to Thought and Will, 415. This shown at length, 416-26. The universe how far intelligible, 426-27. The primacy of Will a delusion, 427-29. Appearance, meaning of the term, 429-30. Appearances and the Absolute, 430-34. Nature, is it beautiful and adorable? 434-39. Ends in Nature—a question not for Metaphysics, 439-40. Philosophy of Nature what, 439-42. Progress, is there any in the Absolute, 442-44; or any life after death, 444-52?

  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 movement each develops 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 come 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, appearance consists in the discrepancy between these two aspects. And reality in the end belongs to nothing but the single Real. For take anything, no matter what it is, which is less than the Absolute, and the inner discrepancy at once proclaims that 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 |404| something other than its own intent and meaning, as long as the existence actually is less or more 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 discrepancy 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-contradiction, 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 appearance can be lost. Each one contributes and is essential to the unity of the whole. And hence we have observed (Chapter xxv) 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 worthless. And thus, while you take your stand on some one valuable factor, the others appear to you to be means which subserve its existence. 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 however have served to indicate that truth which we 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 cannot 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 I not subordinate the one to the other, and in relation to the Absolute they are all alike essential and necessary.
  |405| In the present chapter, returning to the idea of the Absolute as a whole of experience, I will from this point of view survey briefly its main aspects. Of the attitudes possible in experience I will try to show that none has supremacy. 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 questions 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 consider if it is possible to doubt this, but for the present I shall assume it as a truth which has held good. Under what main aspects then, let us ask, is experience 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. Now of these psychical modes not any one is resolvable 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 perceive this in great part already through former discussions, but I will briefly resume and in some |406| 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 divergencies except so far as they affect the main result. *
  (1) If we consider first of all the aspect of pleasure 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 dependents 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 of pleasure, can we be even sure that this result will be pleasure as such? 1 There is however a far 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.

* pp. 406. We cannot, if we abstract the aspects of pleasure and pain and confine ourselves to these abstractions, discover directly within them an internal discrepancy, any more than we could do this in every abstracted sensible quality. But since these aspects are as a fact together with, first, their sensible qualities and, next, the rest of the world, and since no relation or connection of any kind can be in the end merely external, it follows that in the end the nature of pleasure or pain must somehow go beyond itself. †
  If we take pleasure and pain, or one of them, to be not aspects of sensation but themselves special sensations, that will of course make no real difference to the argument. For in any case such sensations would be mere aspects and adjectives of their whole psychical states. I would add that, even in psychology, the above distinction seems, to me at least, to possess very little importance. The attempt again to draw a sharp distinction between discomfort and pain would (even if it could be successful) make no difference to us here.

† Cf. the Note on p. 363, and Notes A and B of this Appendix.

  (2) From mere pleasure and pain we may pass on to feeling, and I take feeling in the sense of the immediate unity of a finite psychical centre. It means for me, first, the general condition before distinctions 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 |407| so far as that is only present and simply is. 2 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 feeling as real, or as a consistent aspect of reality? We must reply in the negative.

1 See above Chapter xvii and below Chapter xxvii.

2 Compare Chapters ix, xix, xx and xxvii, and Mind, N.S. 6. I had hoped elsewhere to write something on the position to be given to Feeling in psychology. But for the purpose of this volume I trust, on the whole, to have said enough.

  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 content is irreconcilable with the immediacy of its existence. For the finite content is necessarily determined from the outside; its external relations (however negative they may desire to remain) penetrate 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 untrue 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 {separation} of feeling’s unity, and this unity is not again restored and made good except in the Absolute.
  (3) We may pass next to the perceptional or theoretic, and again, on the other side, to the practical aspect. Each of these differs from the two foregoing by implying distinction, and, in the first place, a distinction between subject and object. 1 The perceptional side has at the outset, of course, no special existence; for it is given at first in |408| 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 elements are separated from the confused mass of feeling, and stand apparently by themselves and over against this. 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 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 perception or thought. Its essence depends on qualification 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.

1 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 affected.

  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 relation to others, and it is |409| 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 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 appearance, 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 jarring 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 existence. But it depends on ideality and |410| mere appearance for its starting-point and essence; and the harmony which it makes is forever 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 attitude of practice, like all the rest, is not reality but is appearance. 1, * 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 existence, and to have at last surmounted and risen beyond the relational consciousness. For the aesthetic 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.

1 In the foregoing chapter we have already dealt with the contradictions 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 the 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 something which I am incapable of performing. The process here is certainly incomplete, but still can be rightly called volition, 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 has 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 incompatibility of the idea with any present realisation of its content is recognized. 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 road 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.

* p. 410, Note. The account of Will, given in Mind, No. 49, has been criticized by Mr. Shand in an interesting article on Attention and Will, Mind, N. S. No. 16. I at once recognized that my statement in the above account was defective, but in principle I have not found anything to correct. I still hold Will always to be the self-realization of an idea, but it is necessary to provide that this idea shall not in a certain sense conflict with that which in a higher sense is identified with the self. By ‘higher’ I do not mean ‘more moral,’ and I am prepared to explain what I do mean by the above. I would on this point refer to an article by Mr. Stout (in Mind, N.S. No. 19) with which I find myself largely though not wholly in agreement. I must however hope at some future time to deal with the matter, and will here state my main result. ‘It is will where an idea realizes itself, provided that the idea is not formally contrary to a present resolve of the subject’— so much seems certain. But there is uncertainty about the further proviso, ‘Provided also that the idea is not too contrary materially to the substance of the self.’ Probably, the meaning of ‘will’ being really unfixed, there is no way of fixing it at a certain point except arbitrarily.
  Since the above was written an enquiry into the nature of volition, with a discussion of many questions concerning conation. activity, agency, and attention, has appeared in Mind. See Nos. 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 49, and parts of 51.

This aspect of the world satisfies us in a way unattainable by theory or practice, and it plainly |411| 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 certainly 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 complex 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 someone. 1
  Such an union of characters is inconsistent, and we require no great space to point out its discrepancy. Let us first 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 concordant and at one; but, on the other hand, because the object is finite, such an agreement is impossible.

1 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.

And thus, as was the case with truth and goodness, there is a partial divergence of the two aspects of extension |412| and harmony. The expression is imperfect, 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 always inconsistent with itself—may even visibly go beyond its actual expression, 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 internally be in discord with itself. Thus the beautiful object, viewed as independent, is no more than appearance. 1
  But to take 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 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.

1 The question of degrees in beauty, like that of degrees in truth and goodness, would be interesting. But it is hardly necessary for us to enter on it here.

  We have now surveyed the different regions of experience, |413| 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, implies 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 pass 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 that this directly implies the remaining aspects of the world. We must be satisfied with the knowledge that pain and pleasure are adjectives, adjectives, 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 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 practical, and the aesthetic 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 percipient, 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 |414| 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-sufficient. 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. Perception 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 suggested 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 disappeared, we should have gone beyond beauty or goodness or truth altogether. 1

1 I have not thought it necessary here to point out how in their actual existence these aspects are implicated with one another. All the other aspects are more or less the objects of, and produced by, will; and will itself, together with the rest, is an object to thought. Thought again depends on all for its material, and will on all for its ideas. And the same psychical state may be indifferently will or thought, according to the side from which you view it (p. 419-20). Every state again to some extent may be considered and taken as feeling.

  We have seen that the various aspects of experience imply one another, and that all point to a unity which comprehends and perfects them. And I 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, |415| but it is an experience of which, as such, we have no direct knowledge. We never have, or are, a state which is the perfect 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 element 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 predicated of it. But, if so, in the end the whole diversity 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 explain would be possible only when the whole, as such, was comprehended. And 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 first we may remind ourselves of some of those points which a full explanation must include.
  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 |416| 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 which 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? And why is it that, within us and without us, there is a knowable arrangement, an order such that existence answers to thought, and that personal identity and a communication between souls is possible? We have, in short, on one side a diversity and finitude, and on the other side we have a unity. And, unless we know throughout the universe how these aspects stand the one to the other, the universe is not explained.
  But 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 contained 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 that your explanation 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 intelligence 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 unexplained. For the two aspects, however much one implies and indeed is the other, must in some sense still be two. And unless we comprehend how their |417| 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 themselves be the twofold appearance of a unity left unexplained. It may however repay us to examine further 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 application where their meaning is changed. 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 ceaselessly renewed basis of two-sided change. Identity, permanence, and continuity, are everywhere ideal; they are unities forever 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. For 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 consideration, let us regard the process of the world as presenting two aspects. 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.
  |418| Now it is plain, first, that such 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 effect 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 me 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 fix 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 existence. And as souls to an unknown extent can have their life and world in common, so the effects of will and thought may show themselves there where the actual process is not experienced. That which 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 thought. 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 world discordant, half-completed, and accidental for each one, is in the Whole a compensated system of conspiring particulars. Everything there is the joint result of two functions which in their 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 |419| 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 feeling and of the aesthetic consciousness. Now, if thought and will fail to explain these, and they, along with thought and will, have to be predicated unexplained of the Unity, the Unity after all is unknown. Feeling, in the first place, cannot be regarded as the indifferent ground of perception and will; for, if so, this ground itself offers a new fact which requires explanation. Feeling therefore must be taken as a sort of confusion, and as a nebula which would grow distinct on closer scrutiny. And the aesthetic 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 connection 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.
  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 presupposes the distinction of idea from fact—a distinction made actual by a process, and presumably itself due to will. And thought has to start from the existence which only will can make. Hence it presupposes, and again as an existing process seems |420| created by, will, although will on its side is dependent on thought. We must, I 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 presuppose 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. Again 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 are not, then, two clear functions in unity, but each function, taken by itself, is still the identity of both. And each can hardly be itself, and not the other, as being a mere preponderance 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 one-sidedly; or, to speak plainly, their diversity is barely appearance.
  If however thought and will really are not different, they are 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 is what we have most to explain. We are not to go outside will and thought, in order to seek our explanation; 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 happening 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. But 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 |421| hands the main question, Why is it that thought and will diverge or appear to diverge? It is in this real or apparent divergence that the actual world of finite 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, neither can be a predicate of the real unity, and the nature of that unity, with its diversity of appearance, is left unexplained. And to place the whole succession in time on the side of mere perception, 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 content is perceptible 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 arc forced now to predicate as an adjective the unexplained world of perception. Thus, in the end, will and thought 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 their 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 |422| 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 intelligence 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, are still not understood. If finitude 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 somewhere outside it.

  The world cannot be explained as the appearance of two counterpart 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 themselves self-evident. We saw that there was a doubt as to how much ground these two functions covered. Still the existence of an idealizing and of a realising function, each independent and primary, we took for granted. But 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, apart from the question of range, will and thought are nowhere self-evident or primary. Each in its working depends on antecedent connections, connections 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 naturally involved in the very essence of these functions, and we hence did not admit |423| 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 them 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 consider the making of distinctions. For, in the first place, distinctions largely seem to grow up apart from 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 relations. 1 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 transition here a thing so clear that it demands no explanation? 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 transition’. 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.

1 On this point see Mind, No. 47.

It will be something external to the function, and given |424| from outside. And thus, with will and thought alike, we must accept this same conclusion. There is no willing or thinking apart from the particular acts, and these particular acts, as will and thought, are clearly not self-evident. They involve in their essences a connection 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.
  This conclusion, not dependent on psychology finds itself supported and confirmed there. For will and thought, in the sense in which we 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 throughout 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 substance with common laws; and of this material will and thought are one-sided applications. Far 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 I must content myself here with a brief notice of some leading points. Thought is a development from a ground of preceding ideality. The division of content from existence is not created but grows. 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 |425| 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 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 precedes 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. 1
  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 distinctions, the ideal relations, in which thought has its being—from where do they come? As particular 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 perception and mere psychical 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 arrangement 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.

1 With the above compare, again, Mind, No. 47.

In its ideal matter it is a result from mere psychical growth, its ideal connections in part will |426| throughout 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 psychological 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 dependent on itself. And the result may be summed up thus; certainly all relations are ideal, and as certainly not all relations are products of thinking. 1

  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 assistance. 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 condition on which the being of will is dependent. Will, in brief, is based on associations, psychical and physical at once, or, again, upon mere physiological 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 considering 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 presupposed workings. But, if so, assuredly will cannot be taken as primary. 2

1 How what seems a faculty of analysis can be developed I have endeavoured to point out in the article referred to above.

2 I have left out of the account those cases where what works is mainly Blending. Obviously the same conclusion follows here.

  The universe as a whole may be called intelligible. It |427| 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. 1 But the universe is not intelligible in the sense that it can throughout be understood: nor, starting from the mere intellect, could you anticipate its features in detail For, in answering the demands 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, 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 which their variety is brought together, remains in detail unintelligible.

1 It is intelligible also, I hare remarked above in Chapter xix, in the sense of being distinguishable content.

  With this result it is time 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 |428| is incumbent on us to show how appearance 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 tar as is required. In short, an appeal to will, either in metaphysics or in psychology, 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 metaphysics is concerned, one can perhaps account for such a barren self-deception. The mere intellect has shown itself incompetent to explain all phenomena, 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 opposed. 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 |429| to defend the primacy of will. It may be urged that all principles and axioms in the end must be practical, and must accordingly be called the expression of will. But such an assertion would be mistaken. 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, aesthetic, and practical, there are certain modes of experience which satisfy. In these modes we can repose, while, again, their absence 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. 419-20). 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. 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 philosophy. But its claims appear plausible so long only as darkness obscures them. They are plainly absurd where they do not prefer to be merely unintelligible.

  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 |430| phrases and terms would be left us. But in the case of appearance I admit at once that the objection 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 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 appearance. And we have found that everywhere throughout the world such ideality prevails. Anything less than the Whole has turned out to be not self-contained. 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-transcendent, alienated from itself, and passing away from itself towards another existence. Hence the finite is appearance because, on the one side, it is an adjective 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, concerned with a denial. All is appearance, and no appearance, nor any combination of these, is the same as Reality. This is half the truth, and by itself it is a dangerous error. We must turn at once to correct it by adding its counterpart |431| and supplement. The Absolute is 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 barely that the Absolute is either one of them or all—the position is hopeless. Having first set these down as appearance, you now proclaim them as the very opposite; for that which is identified with the Absolute is no appearance but is utter reality. But we have seen the solution of this puzzle, and we know the sense and meaning in which these half-truths come together into one. The Absolute 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 problem. Everything is essential, and yet one thing is worthless in comparison with others. Nothing is perfect, as such, and yet everything in some degree contains a vital function of Perfection. Every attitude 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 than itself. Hence appearance is error, if you will, but not every error is illusion. 1 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 immanent alike through every region of appearances. There are degrees and ranks, but, one and all, they are alike indispensable.

1 On the difference between these see Chapter xxvii.

  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 |432| is reality in every existence however slight; and, where we can point to reality or truth, there is the one undivided life of the Absolute. Appearance without reality would be impossible, for what then could appear? And reality without appearance would be nothing, for there certainly is nothing outside appearances. But on the other hand Reality (we must repeat this) is not the sum of things. It is the unity in which all things, coming together, are transmuted, in which they are changed all alike, though not changed equally. And, as we have perceived, in this unity, relations of isolation and hostility are affirmed and absorbed. These also are harmonious in the Whole, though not of course harmonious as such, and while severally confined 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 discordance 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 Absolute 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 subordinate aspects. They imply distinctions falling, in each case, within one subject province of the Absolute’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 sovereign Absolute would be plainly |433| 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 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 contained 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 are 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 task (I may repeat) is not |434| 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 remark on some points of interest. There are certain questions which at this stage we may hope to dispose 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, I 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 identify 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 explanation. But in this way there grows up a great confusion. For 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; 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 |435| 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 individualized 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 we 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 adorable 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 might 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 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, |436| then a difficulty will arise in two directions. In the first place this claim has to get itself admitted by physical science. The psychical has to be adopted as 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 justify our refusal to go further. For why is Nature to be confined to the perceptible world? If the psychical and the ‘subjective’ 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 Nature I cannot enter. And I cannot discuss how far, and in what sense, the physical world is included in the true object of religion. These are special enquiries which fall without the scope of my volume. But whether Nature is beautiful or adorable 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 convenient 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. 1

1 I do not think it necessary to restate any qualification required here by parts of Nature taken as not perceived. I have dealt with this sufficiently in Chapters xxii and xxiv.

The sensible life, |437| 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 principle 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 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 another side. It is certain that everything is determined 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 Absolute itself. There is a point where increase of reality implies passage beyond self. A thing |438| 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 considering 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 universe 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 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 Nature 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 abstraction 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 the term. But the boundary of Nature can hardly be drawn even 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 working theoretical purpose. Our |439| 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 point which we mentioned above. Except in finite souls and except in volition may we 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 aesthetics 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? On this difficult subject I 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 (Chapters xxii and xxiii). And that even for working 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 explanation which is not mechanical, that is not the affair of metaphysics. For myself, in other ways ignorant, I 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 fragments 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 |440| 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 natural science has no rights. But within its boundaries 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 individuality; and as we find that any form of existence 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. Metaphysics 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 order 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 assisting 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, |441| and to attempt to arrange these on what seems a true principle of worth, can be hardly irrational.
  Such a philosophy of Nature, if at least it were true to itself, could not intrude on the province of physical science. For it would, in short, abstain wholly and in every form from speculation on genesis. 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 sciences upon any question of development or of order could not properly arise. ‘Higher’ and ‘lower’, terms which imply always a standard and end, would in philosophy be applied solely to designate rank. Natural science would still be free, as now, to use, or even to abuse, such terms at its pleasure, and to allow them any degree of meaning which is found convenient. Progress for philosophy would never have any temporal sense, and it could matter nothing if the word elsewhere seemed to bear little or no other. With these brief remarks I must leave a subject which deserves serious attention.
  In a complete philosophy the whole world of appearance would be set out as a progress. It would show a development of principle though not 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 Nature. And, at each rising degree of this scale, we should find more of the first character with less of 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 manifold has utterly ceased. The universal here is immanent in the parts, and its system does not lie somewhere outside and in the relations between them. It is above the relational form and has absorbed it in a higher unity, a whole in which there is no division between elements and laws. And, since this |442| principle shows itself from the first in the inconsistencies of bare mechanism, 1 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 perfection. 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 region 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. And the question whether the history of a man or a world is going forwards or back, does not belong to metaphysics. For nothing perfect, nothing genuinely real, can move. The Absolute has no seasons, but all at once bears its leaves, fruit, and blossoms. 2 Like our globe it always, and it never, has summer and winter.

1 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.

2 This image is, I believe, borrowed from Strauss.

  |443| 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 happening in time and a personal finitude. We require a capacity for becoming better, and, I 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 ultimate 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 I can not profess respect for views which seem to me in many cases insincere. If progress is to be more than relative, and is something 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 consideration, 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. You have become not merely irrational, but you have also, I presume, broken with every considerable 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 absolute. Our attitudes in life give place ceaselessly the one to the other, and life 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 |444| 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 content 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 cannot 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 enthusiasm 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. I 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 might fairly be misunderstood. It is not easy, in the first place, to say exactly what a future life means. The period of personal continuance obviously 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 sufficient 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 elsewhere to set these out and to clear away confusions. 1 I must however pass at once to the question of possibility.

1 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 can 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 and 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.

  |445| There is one sense in which the immortality of souls seems impossible. We must remember that the universe is incapable of increase. And to suppose a constant supply of new souls, none of which ever perished, would clearly land us in the end in an insoluble difficulty. But it is quite unnecessary, I presume, to hold the 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 obviously here we have passed into a region of ignorance. And to say that in this region a personal 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. 1 After an interval, no matter how long, 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 succession 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.

1 I have attempted to show this in an article on the ‘Evidences of Spiritualism’, Fortnightly Review, December, 1885. It may perhaps be worthwhile 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.

In |446| 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 contradicts the known nature of Reality. 1 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 time remove this and itself by some destructive addition. A thing is possible further, according as its meaning contains without discrepancy more and more of what is held to be real. We, in other words, consider anything more possible as it grows in probability. 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 straightforward. But we have still to deal with the unknown in two more troublesome 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.

1 See, above, Chapter xxiv, and, below, Chapter xxvii.

  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 impossible. But I fail to find any further and additional reason in its favour. And, next, would a bodiless soul be immortal? And, again, |447| 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 considerations. Again, if we take body to be essential—a body, that is, consisting of matter either familiar 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 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 certainly cannot particularize and set out the chances, but in another sense the field is not quite unknown. 1
  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 experience may 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 favourable 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, quite 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 embodied—the amount is not great.

1 The probability of an unknown event is rightly taken as one half. But, in applying this abstract truth, we must be on our guard against error. In the case of an event in time our ignorance 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 occurrence in a certain place, must be therefore much less than one half. On the other side again considerations of another kind will come in, and may raise the value indefinitely.

The balance of hostile probability seems so large that the |448| fraction on the other side to my mind is not considerable. And we may repeat, and may sum up our conclusion 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. 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 for judging, the result is not much modified. Among those grounds we certainly find a part which favours continuance; but, taken at its highest, that part appears to be small. Hence a future life must be taken as decidedly 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 outside the main point. The positive evidence for a future life is what weighs with our minds; and this is independent of discussions as to what, in the abstract, 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 unavailing. The addition to general probability, which they make, is to my mind trifling; and, without examining these arguments in detail, I will add a few remarks. 1

1 The argument based on apparitions and necromancy I have discussed in the article cited above, p. 445. There, on the hypothesis that extra-human intelligences had been proved, I attempted to show that the conclusions of Spiritualism were still baseless. I had no space there to urge that the hypothesis itself is ridiculously untrue. The spiritualist appears to think that anything which 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 unbroken continuity of the phenomena is fatal to Spiritualism. 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 results of modern seances are accepted, the more impossible it becomes, in such a farseeing and such a silly world of demons, to find any sort of test for Spirit-Identity. As to facts my mind is, and always has been, perfectly open. It is the irrational conclusions of the spiritualist that I reject with disgust. They strike me as the expression of, and the excuse for, a discreditable superstition.

  |449| Philosophy, I repeat, has to justify all sides of our nature; and this means, I agree, that our main cravings must find satisfaction. But that every desire of every kind must, as such, be gratified—this is quite a different demand, and it is surely irrational. At all events it is opposed to the results of our preceding discussions. The destiny of the finite, we saw everywhere, is to reach consummation, but never wholly as such, never quite in its own way. And as to this desire for a future life, what is there in it so sacred? How can its attainment be implied in the very principles of our nature? Nay, is there in it, taken by itself, anything moral in the least or religious at all? I desire to have no pain, but always pleasure, and to continue so indefinitely. But the literal fulfilment of my wish is incompatible with my place in the universe. It is irreconcilable with my own nature, and I have to be content therefore with that measure of satisfaction which my nature permits. And am I, on this account, to proclaim philosophy insolvent, 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 about goodness. ‘But then’, it will be exclaimed, ‘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 |450| finds me deaf. ‘But then strict justice is not paramount’. No, I 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 the loss of all our hard-won gains’. But is a thing lost, in the first place, because I fail to get it or retain it? And, in the second place, 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 progress, how reach perfection?’ And with 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 indefinitely to put off perfection. 1 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 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’. Perhaps, 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 humanity, has at least a strong case. But the question here seems irrelevant.

1 The reader, who desires to follow out this point, must be referred to Hegel’s Phänomenologie, 449-460.

If it could indeed be urged that the essence of |451| 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 deteriorate—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 environment should deteriorate, and it is well for them to make way for another race constituted more rationally and happily. And I must leave the matter so. 1
  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 demands it also. And to debate this special question, apart from an enquiry into the ultimate nature of the world, is surely unprofitable.

1 I have said nothing about the argument based on our desire to meet once more those 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, I think, can have reached a certain time of life, without finding, more or less, that such desires are inconsistent with themselves. There are partings made by death, and, perhaps, worse partings made by life; and there are partings which both life and death unite in veiling from our eyes. And friends that have buried their quarrel in a woman’s grave, would they at the Resurrection be friends? But, in any case, the desire can hardly pass as a serious argument. The revolt of modern Christianity against 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 implied 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 affections—the only appeal as to future life which to me individually is not hollow—can hardly be turned into a proof.

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, |452| is making its way. A personal continuance is possible, and it is but little more. Still, if anyone 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-deception.

Top ↑

Chapter XXVII. Ultimate Doubts

|453-489| Is our conclusion merely possible? 453-54. Preliminary statement as to possibility and doubt. These must rest on positive knowledge, 454-59. This applied to our Absolute. It is one, 459-63. It is experience, 463-66. But it does not (properly speaking) consist of souls, 466-70; nor is it (properly) personal, 470-73. Can the Absolute be called happy? 473-74. Knowledge is conditional or absolute, and so is impossibility, 475-77. Finite knowledge is all conditional, 477-80. It varies in strength and in corrigibility, 480-81. In the end not even absolute truth is quite true, and yet the distinction remains, 482-83. Relation of truth to reality, 483-85. Our result reconciles extremes, and is just to our whole nature, 485-86. Error and illusion, 486-88. The presence of Reality in all appearances, but to different degrees, is the last word of philosophy, 488-89.

  It is time, however prematurely, to bring 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 complement and addition. And hence, because nothing in the end can be merely 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 nowhere the sign of a recalcitrant element. We could 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 |454| 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.
  1. 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 fragment 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 theoretical 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 offered 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 fallibility, and to argue from 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. 1

* p. 454. With regard to the ‘familiar Greek dilemma,’ the attentive reader will not have failed to observe that, when I later on, p. 544, maintain that no possible truth is quite true, I have explained that this want of truth is not the same thing as intellectual falsehood or fallibility. The ‘sceptical’ critic therefore who still desires to show that I myself have fallen into this dilemma, will, I think, do well still to ignore pp. 482-85.
  A probability, I may here go on to remark, of many millions to one against the truth of some statement may be a very good and sufficient reason for our putting that, for some purpose or purposes, on one side and so treating it as nothing. But no such probability does or can justify us in asserting the statement not to be true. That is not scepticism at all, but on the contrary it is mere |563| dogmatism. Further I would here repeat that any probability in favour of general scepticism which rests on psychological grounds, must itself be based on an assumption of knowledge with regard to those grounds. Hence if you make your sceptical conclusion universal here, you destroy your own premises. And, on the other side, if you stop short of an universal conclusion, perhaps the particular doctrine which you wish to doubt is more certain by far than even your general psychological premises. I have (p. 137) remarked on this variety of would-be scepticism, and I find that a critic in the Psychological Review, Vol. i., No. 3, Mr. A. Hodder, has actually treated these remarks as an attempted refutation on my part of scepticism in general. It probably did not occur to him that, in thus triumphantly proving my incompetence, he was really giving the measure of his own insight into the subject. With reference to another ‘sceptical’ criticism by another writer I may perhaps do well to emphasize the fact that for me that which has no meaning is most certainly not possible. I had, I even thought, succeeded in laying this down clearly. See for instance p. 446.

1 On this point compare my Principles of Logic, p. 572.

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 intellects value. But such an |455| 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 possibility, nor does anyone 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, 1 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 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 uneasy 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. 1
  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, 3 either as it is or as taken with other things (Chapter xvi), it is at once true and real.

1 Ibid., pp. 202-3. The reader should compare the treatment of Possibility above in this volume (Chapter xxiv), and again in Mr Bosanquet’s Logic.

2 Ibid., p. 570.

3 For, if it did, it would split internally, as well as pass beyond itself externally.

Now clearly a sole possibility cannot so contradict itself; and it |456| must therefore 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 diametrical 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 the guise of modesty, that our principle protests. But, if we seriously consider the matter, our conclusion 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. I will consider next an argument for general doubt which might be drawn from reflection on the privative judgment. 1 In such a judgment the Reality excludes some suggestion, but the basis of the rejection 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 complete, its limitations fall outside itself and lie in our incapacity. And it may be urged here that with Reality this is always the case.

1 Principles of Logic, pp. 112-115, 511-517. And see above, Chapter xxiv.

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, |457| 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?
  But the objection at this point, it is clear, contradicts itself. The 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 better at once to expose the main underlying error. The knowledge of privation, 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 extended itself already beyond these features. Here then, naturally, we have a right to follow its extended 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 light 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 coextensive, and |458| 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 point, it 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 foreordained 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 proceed to work out completely the total universe. And a doubt drawn from privation and based upon ignorance would here entirely disappear. Not only would the system itself have no other possibility outside, but even within its finite details the same consummation would be reached. The words ‘absence’ 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 transformation 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 (pp. 415-16). 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. |459| And here is a field for doubt and for possibility and for theoretical supplement. An incomplete system in every part is inconsistent, and so suggests something beyond. But it can nowhere suggest 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.
  10. 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 good 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 fall. And clearly within these limits (which we cannot fix beforehand) rational doubt becomes irrational assumption. Outside these, again, there may be suggestions, which we cannot say are meaningless or inconsistent 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 Absolute 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 there is nothing except the wholly unmeaning, or else something which on scrutiny is seen really not to fall outside. Thus the supposed Other will, |460| 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 contained 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 inability 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 implies relations, and, through its relations, it unwillingly asserts always a superior unity. * To suppose 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.

* p. 460. The reader will recall here that, so far as diversity does not imply actual relations, it involves presence as a mere aspect in a felt totality. See pp. 124-26 and Note B.

  |461| 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 contradistinguished 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 (pp. 406-7), 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 consciousness 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 determined by opposition to the internal plurality of distinctions. And hence, as one aspect over against 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. 1 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.

1 Compare here Chapter xix.

In other words, feeling |462| cannot be described, for it cannot without transformation 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 experienced 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 exemplified 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 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 consciousness it is opposed, have both become subordinate elements in a new psychical whole of feeling (Chapter xix). Our experience is always from time to time a unity which, as such, is destroyed in becoming 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 the statement that Reality is one. The stubborn objector seems condemned, in any case, to affirm 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 |463| 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 experience. 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 meaning will be found tacitly to consist in experience. 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 perhaps 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 therefore assume this main principle as clearly established, and shall endeavour merely to develope it and to free it from certain obscurities.
  I will recur first to the difficult subject of Solipsism. 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, |464| Solipsism follows. Again, if we can transcend the self at all, then we have made our way, it may be urged, to something perhaps not experience. Our main conclusion, in short, may be met not directly but 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 a 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 outside, you are at once in a different world. But we have shown that these assumptions are mistaken (Chapters xxi and xxiii); and, with their withdrawal, the dilemma falls of itself.
  Finite centres of feeling, while they last, are (so far as we know) not directly pervious 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 stage where in feeling 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 experience 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 1

1 These terms must not be taken as everywhere equivalent. There certainly is no self or soul without a centre of feeling. But there may be centres of feeling which are not selves, and again not souls (see below). Possibly also some selves are too fleeting to be called souls, while almost certainly there are souls which are not properly selves. The latter term should not be used at all where there is in no sense a distinction of self from not-self. And it can hardly always be used in precisely the same sense; (Chapter ix).

—involves and only exists through an |465| intellectual construction. The self is thus a construction based on, and itself transcending, immediate experience. Hence to describe all experience as the mere adjective 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 imperfect 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 experience 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 |466| experience. And to speak of transcendence into another world is therefore mistaken.
  For certain purposes what I experience can be considered as the state 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 infinitesimal 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 contained 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 Reality. 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, except in one aspect, my experience. The world and experience 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 included.

  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? *

* pp. 466-8. With regard to t

his question of some element of Reality falling outside of finite centres I find but little to add. The one total experience, which is the Absolute, has, as such, a character which, in its specific aspect of qualitative totality, must be taken not to fall within any finite centre. But the elements, which in their unity make and are this specific ‘quality,’ need not, so far as I see, to the least extent fall outside of finite centres. Such processes of and relations between centres, as more or less are not experienced by those particular centres, may, for all we know, quite well be experienced by others. And it seems more probable that in some form or other they are so experienced. This seems more probable because it appears to involve less departure from given fact, and because we can find no good reason for the additional departure in the shape of any theoretical advantage in the end resulting from it. We may conclude then that there is no element in the process of making all harmonious within the Absolute which does not fall within finite centres. What falls outside, and is over and above, is not the result but the last specific character which makes the result what it is. But even if some of the matter (so to speak) of the Absolute fell outside of finite centres, I cannot see myself how |564| this could affect our main result, or indeed what further conclusion could follow from such a hypothesis. The reader must remember that in the Absolute we in any case allow perfections beyond anything we can know, so long as these fall within the Absolute’s general character. And on the above hypothesis, so far as I see, we could not go one single step further. It could not justify us in predicating of the Absolute any lower excellence, e.g. self-consciousness or will or personality, as such, and still less some feature alien to the Absolute’s general nature. But to predicate of the Absolute, on the other hand, the highest possible perfection, is what in any case and already we are bound to do.

It seems at first sight natural to point at once to the relations between these centres. But such relations, we find on reflection, have been, so far, included in the perception and thought of the centres themselves. And what the question comes to is, rather, this, Can there be matter of experience, in any form, |467| which 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 experienced 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. The 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 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 together and is <|468|/b> 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 I can myself perceive no ground. And since, even if we assume this, the main result seems 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.
  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 experience. Nor again can we affirm that every centre implies and |469| entails in some sense a corresponding 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 cannot regard as ultimate. It suggests that in the Absolute finite centres are maintained and respected, and that we may consider them, as such, to persist and to be merely ordered and arranged. But not like this (we have seen) is the final destiny and last truth of things. We have a rearrangement not merely of things but of their internal elements. We have an all-pervasive 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. 1
  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.

1 For this reason Humanity, or an organism, kingdom, or society of selves, is not an ultimate idea. 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 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 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 nothing else at all; pp. 367-8, 381-2.