And truth, as we have seen, is the effort to heal this disease, as it were, homceopathically. Thought has to accept, without reserve, the ideality of the " given," its want of consistency and its self-transcen- dence. And by pushing this self-transcendence to the uttermost point, thought attempts to find there consummation and rest. The subject, on the one hand, is expanded until it is no longer what is given. It becomes the whole universe, which presents it- self and which appears in each given moment with but part of its reality. It grows into an all-inclusive whole, existing somewhere and somehow, if we only could perceive it. But on the other hand, in quali- fying this reality, thought consents to a partial ab- negation. It has to recognise the division of the « " what " from the " that," and it cannot so join these aspects as to get rid of mere ideas and arrive at actual reality. For it is in and by ideas only that thought moves and has life. The content it applies to the reality has, as applied, no genuine existence. It is an adjective divorced from its " that," and never in judgment, even when the judgment is complete, THOUGHT AND REALITY. 1 67 restored to solid unity. Thus the truth belongs to existence, but it does not as such exist. It is a character which indeed reality possesses, but a char- acter which, as truth and as ideal, has been set loose from existence; and it is never rejoined to it in such a way as to come together singly and make fact. Hence, truth shows a dissection and never an actual life. Its predicate can never be equivalent to its subject. And if it became so, and if its adjectives could be at once self-consistent and re-welded to ex- istence, it would not be truth any longer. It would have then passed into another and a higher reality.
And I will now deal with the misapprehension to which I referred, and the consideration of which may, I trust, help us forward.1 There is an erroneous idea that, if reality is more than thought, thought itself is, at least, quite unable to say so. To assert the existence of anything in any sense beyond thought suggests, to some minds, the doctrine of the Thing- in-itself. And of the Thing-in-itself we know (Chapter xii.) that if it ex- isted we could not know of it; and, again, so far as we know of it, we know that it does not exist. The attempt to apprehend this Other in succeeding would be suicide, and in suicide could not reach anything beyond total failure. Now, though I have urged this result, I wish to keep it within rational limits, and I dissent wholly from the corollary that nothing more than thought exists. But to think of anything which can exist quite outside of thought I agree is im- possible. If thought is one element in a whole, you cannot argue from this ground that the remainder of such a whole must stand apart and independent. From this ground, in short, you can make no infer- ence to a Thing-in-itself. And there is no impossi- bility in thought's existing as an element, and no 1 The remainder of this chapter has been reprinted, with some ons and omissions, from Mind, No. 51.
1 68 REALITY.
self-contradiction in its own judgment that it is less than the universe.
We have seen that anything real has two aspects, existence and character, and that thought always must work within this distinction. Thought, in its actual processes and results, cannot transcend the dualism of the " that " and the " what." I do not mean that in no sense is thought beyond this dualism, or that thought is satisfied with it and has no desire for something better. But taking judgment to be completed thought, I mean that in no judgment are the subject and predicate the same. In every judgment the genuine subject is reality, which goes beyond the predicate and of which the predicate is an adjective. And I would urge first that, in desir- ing to transcend this distinction, thought is aiming at suicide. We have seen that in judgment we find always the distinction of fact and truth, of idea and reality. Truth and thought are not the thing itself, but are of it and about it. Thought predicates an ideal content of a subject, which idea is not the same as fact, for in it existence and meaning are neces- sarily divorced. And the subject, again, is neither the mere " what " of the predicate, nor is it any other mere " what." Nor, even if it is proposed to take up a whole with both its aspects, and to predicate the ideal character of its own proper subject, will that proposal assist us. For if the subject is the same as the predicate, why trouble oneself to judge? But if it is not the same, then what is it, and how is it dif- ferent? Either then there is no judgment at all, and but a pretence of thinking without thought, or there is a judgment, but its subject is more than the predi- cate, and is a "that" beyond a mere "what." The subject, I would repeat, is never mere reality, or bare existence without character. The subject, doubtless, has unspecified content which is not stated in the predicate. For judgment is the differentiation of a complex whole, and hence always is analysis and THOUGHT AND REALITY. 1 69 synthesis in one. It separates an element from, and restores it to, the concrete basis; and this basis of necessity is richer than the mere element by itself. But then this is not the question which concerns us here. That question is whether, in any judgment which really says anything, there is not in the sub- ject an aspect of existence which is absent from the bare predicate. And it seems clear that this ques- tion must be answered in the affirmative. And if it is urged that the subject itself, being in thought, can therefore not fall beyond, I must ask for more accuracy; for M partly beyond " appears compatible with " partly within." And, leaving prepositions to themselves, I must recall the real issue. For I do not deny that reality is an object of thought; I deny that it is barely and merely so. If you rest here on a distinction between thought and its object, that opens a further question to which I shall return (p. 174). But if you admit that in asserting reality to fall within thought, you meant that in reality there is nothing beyond what is made thought's object, your position is untenable. Reflect upon any judgment as long as you please, operate upon the subject of it to any extent which you desire, but then (when you have finished) make an actual judgment.
And when that is made, see if you do not discover, be- yond the content of your thought, a subject of which it is true, and which it does not comprehend. You will find that the object of thought in the end must be ideal, and that there is no idea which, as such, con-| tains its own existence. The " that " of the actual subject will for ever give a something which is not a mere idea, something which is different from any truth, something which makes such a difference to your thinking, that without it you have not even thought completely.
" But," it may be answered, " the thought you speak of is thought that is not perfect. Where thought is perfect there is no discrepancy between 1 70 REALITY.
subject and predicate. A harmonious system of content predicating itself, a subject self-conscious in that system of content, this is what thought should mean. And here the division of existence and char- acter is quite healed up. If such completion is not actual, it is possible, and the possibility is enough." But it is not even possible, I must persist, if it really is unmeaning. And once more I must urge the former dilemma. If there is no judgment, there is no thought; and if there is no difference, there is no judgment, nor any self-consciousness. But if, on the other hand, there is a difference, then the subject is beyond the predicated content.
Still a mere denial, I admit, is not quite satisfac- tory. Let us then suppose that the dualism inherent in thought has been transcended. Let us assume that existence is no longer different from truth, and let us see where this takes us. It takes us straight to thought's suicide. A system of content is going to swallow up our reality; but in our reality we have the fact of sensible experience, immediate pre- sentation with its colouring of pleasure and pain. Now I presume there is no question of conjuring this fact away; but how it is to be exhibited as an^ element in a system of thought- content, is a problem not soluble. Thought is relational and discursive, and, if it ceases to be this, it commits suicide; and j yet, if it remains thus, how does it contain immediate presentation? Let us suppose the impossible ac- complished; let us imagine a harmonious system of ideal contents united by relations, and reflecting it- self in self-conscious harmony. This is to be reality, all reality; and there is nothing outside it. The delights and pains of the flesh, the agonies and rap- tures of the soul, these are fragmentary meteors fallen from thought's harmonious system. But these burning experiences — how in any sense can they be mere pieces of thought's heaven? For, if the fall THOUGHT AND REALTY. 171 is real, there is a world outside thought's region, and, if the fall is apparent, then human error itself is not included there. Heaven, in brief, must either not be heaven, or else not all reality. Without a metaphor, feeling belongs to perfect 'thought, or it does not If it does not, there is at once a side of existence beyond thought. But if it does belong, then thought is different from thought discursive and relational. To make it include immediate ex- perience, its character must be transformed. It must cease to predicate, it must get beyond mere relations, it must reach something other than truth. Thought, in a word, must have been absorbed into a fuller experience. Now such an experience may be called thought, if you choose to use that word. But if any one else prefers another term, such as feeling or will, he would be equally justified. For the result is a whole state which both includes and goes beyond each element; and to speak of it as simply one of them seems playing with phrases. For (I must repeat it) when thought begins to be] more than relational, it ceases to be mere thinking.! A basis, from which the relation is thrown out and into which it returns, is something not exhausted by that relation. It will, in short, be an existence which is not mere truth. Thus, in reaching a whole which can contain every aspect within it, thought must absorb what divides it from feeling and will. But when these all have come together, then, since none of them can perish, they must be merged in a whole in which they are harmonious. But that whole assuredly is not simply one of its aspects. And the question is not whether the universe is in any sense intelligible. The question is whether, if | you thought it and understood it, there would be no difference left between your thought and the thing. ' And, supposing that to have happened, the question is then whether thought has not changed its nature. Let us try to realize more distinctly what this 172 REALITY.
supposed consummation would involve. Since both truth and fact are to be there, nothing must be lost, and in the Absolute we must keep every item of our experience. We cannot have less, but, on the other hand, we may have much more; and this more may so supplement the elements of our actual experience that in the whole they may become transformed. But to reach a mode of apprehension, which is quite identical with reality, surely predicate and subject, and subject and object, and in short the whole rela- tional form, must be merged. The Absolute does not want, I presume, to make eyes at itself in a mirror, or, like a squirrel in a cage, to revolve the circle of its perfections. Such processes must be dissolved in something not poorer but richer than themselves. And feeling and will must also be transmuted in this whole, into which thought has entered. Such a whole state would possess in a superior form that immediacy which we find (more or less) in feeling; and in this whole all divisions would be healed up. It would be experience entire, containing all elements in harmony. Thought would be present as a higher intuition; will would be there where the ideal had become reality; and beauty and pleasure and feeling would live on in this total fulfilment. Every flame of passion, chaste or carnal, would still burn in the Absolute unquenched and unabridged, a note absorbed in the harmony of its higher bliss. We cannot imagine, I admit, how in detail this can be. But if truth and fact are to be one, then in some such way thought must reach its consummation. But in that consummation thought has certainly been so transformed, that to go on calling it thought seems indefensible.
I have tried to show first that, in the proper sense of thought, thought and fact are not the same. I have urged, in the second place, that, if their iden- tity is worked out, thought ends in a reality which THOUGHT AND REALITY. 173 swallows up its character. I will ask next whether thought s advocates can find a barrier to their client's happy suicide.
They might urge, first, that our consummation is the Thing-in-itself, and that it makes thought know what essentially is not knowable. But this objection forgets that our whole is not anything but sentient experience. And it forgets that, even when we understand by " thought " its strict discursive form, our reality does not exist apart from this. Empha- tically the Absolute is nothing if taken apart from any single one of its elements. But the Thing-in- self, on the other hand, must exist apart.
Let us pass to another objection against our view. We may be told that the End, because it is that which thought aims at, is therefore itself (mere) 0& thought. This assumes that thought cannot desire a consummation in which it is lost. But does not the river run into the sea, and the self lose itself in love? And further, as good a claim for predomin- ance might be made on behalf of will, and again on behalf of beauty and sensation and pleasure. Where all elements reach their end in the Absolute, that end can belong to no one severally. We may illus- trate this principle by the case of morality. That essentially desires an end which is not merely moral because it is super-moral. Nay, even personality itself, our whole individual life and striving, tends to something beyond mere personality. Of course, the Absolute has personality, but it fortunately 1 possesses so much more, that to call it personal \ would be as absurd as to ask if it is moral.1 But in self-consciousness, I may be told, we actually experience a state where truth and being are identical; and here, at all events, thinking is not different from reality. But in our tenth chapter we have seen that no such state exists. There is no 1 Sec further, Chapters xxv. and xxvii.
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self-consciousness in which the object is the same as the subject, none in which what is perceived ex- hausts the whole self. In self-consciousness a part or element, or again a general aspect or character, becomes distinct from the whole mass and stands over against the felt background. But the background is never exhausted by this object, and it never could be so. An experiment should convince any man that in self-consciousness what he feels cannot wholly come before him. It can be exhausted, if at all, only by a long series of observations, and the summed result of these observations cannot be experienced as a fact. Such a result cannot ever be verified as quite true at any particular given moment. In short con- sciousness implies discrimination of an element from the felt mass, and a consciousness that should dis- criminate every element at once is psychologically impossible. And this impossibility, if it became actual, would still leave us held in a dilemma. For there is either no difference, and therefore no dis- tinction, and no consciousness; or there is a distinc- tion, and therefore a difference between object and reality. But surely, if self-consciousness is appealed to, it is evident that at any moment I am more than the self which I can think of. How far everything in feeling may be called intelligible, is not the ques- tion here. But what is felt cannot be understood so that its truth and its existence become the same. And, if that were possible, yet such a process would certainly not be thinking.
In thinking the subject which thinks is more than thought. And that is why we can imagine that in thinking we find all reality. But in the same way the whole reality can as well be found in feeling or in volition. Each is one element in the whole, or the whole in one of its aspects; and hence, when you get an aspect or element, you have the whole with it. But because, given one aspect (whichever it may be), we find the whole universe, to conclude THOUGHT AND REALITY. 1 75 that in the universe there is nothing beyond this single aspect, seems quite irrational.
But the reader may agree that no one really can believe that mere thought includes everything. The difficulty lies, he may urge, in maintaining the oppo- site. Since in philosophy we must think, how is it possible to transcend thought without a self-contra- diction? For theory can reflect on, and pronounce about, all things, and in reflecting on them it there- fore includes them. So that to maintain in thought an Other is by the same act to destroy its otherness, and to persist is to contradict oneself. While admit- ting that thought cannot satisfy us as to reality's falling wholly within its limits, we may be told that, so long as we think, we must ignore this admission. And the question is, therefore, whether philosophy does not end in sheer scepticism — in the necessity, that is, of asserting what it is no less induced to deny. The problem is serious, and I will now at- tempt to exhibit its solution.
We maintain an Other than mere thought. Now in what sense do we hold this? Thought being a judgment, we say that the predicate is never the same as the subject; for the subject is reality presented as 44 this " (we must not say as mere 44 this "). You can certainly abstract from presentation its character of 44 thisness," or its confused related ness; and you can also abstract the feature of presentation. Of these you can make ideas,* for there is nothing which you cannot think of. But you find that these ideas are not the same as the subject of which you must predicate them. You can think of the subject, but you cannot get rid of it, or substitute mere thought-content for it. In other words, in practice thought always is found with, and appears to de- mand, an Other.
1 Principles of Logic, pp. 64-69 I76 REALITY.
Now the question is whether this leads to self- contradiction. If thought asserted the existence of any content which was not an actual or possible object of thought — certainly that assertion in my judgment would contradict itself. But the Other which I maintain, is not any such content, nor is it another separated " what," nor in any case do I suggest that it lies outside intelligence. Everything, all will and feeling, is an object for thought, and must be called intelligible.1 This is certain; but, if so, what becomes of the Other? If we fall back on the mere " that," thatness itself seems a distinction made by thought. And we have to face this diffi- culty: If the Other exists, it must be something; and if it is nothing, it certainly does not exist.
Let us take an actual judgment and examine the subject there with a view to find our Other. In this we at once meet with a complication. We always have more content in the presented subject than in the predicate, and it is hence harder to realize what, beside this overplus of content, the subject possesses. However, passing this by, we can find in the sub- ject two special characters. There is first (a) sensu- ous infinitude, and (6) in the second place there is immediacy.
(a) The presented subject has a detail which is unlimited. By this I do not mean that the actual plurality of its features exceeds a finite number. I mean that its detail always goes beyond itself, and is indefinitely relative to something outside.2 In its given content it has relations which do not terminate within that content; and its existence therefore is not exhausted by itself, as we ever can have it. If I may use the metaphor, it has always edges which are ragged in such a way as to imply another exist- ence from which it has been torn, and without which 1 On this point see below, Chapters xix. and xxvi.
2 This sensible " infinite" is the same as the finite, which we just saw was in its essence " ideal."
THOUGHT AND REALITY. I 77 it really does not exist. Thus the content of the subject strives, we may say, unsuccessfully towards an all-inclusive whole. Now the predicate, on its side, is itself not free from endlessness. For its content, abstracted and finite, necessarily depends on relation to what is beyond. But it lacks the sensible and compulsory detail of the subject. It is not given as one thing with an actual but indefinite con- text. And thus, at least ostensibly, the predicate is hostile to endlessness.
(b) This is one difference, and the second consists in immediacy. The subject claims the character of a single self-subsistent being. In it the aspects of " what" and " that " are not taken as divorced, but it is given with its content as forming one integral whole. The "what" is not sundered from the 11 that," and turned from fact into truth. It is not predicated as the adjective of another " that," or even of its own. And this character of immediacy is plainly not consistent with endlessness. They are, in truth, each an imperfect appearance of indi- viduality.1 But the subject clearly possesses both these discrepant features, while the predicate no less clearly should be without them. For the predicate seeks also for individuality but by a different road.
Now, if we take the subject to have these two characters which are absent from the predicate, and if the desire of thought implies removal of that which makes predicate and subject differ — we begin to perceive the nature of our Other. And we may see at once what is required in order to extinguish its otherness. Subject and predicate alike must accept reformation. The ideal content of the predi- cate must be made consistent with immediate indi- viduality; and, on its side, the subject must be changed so as to become consistent with itself. It must become a self-subsistent, and that means an 1 Compare here the doctrine oi Chapters xix. and xxiv. A.R. N 1 78 REALITY, all-inclusive, individual. But these reforms are im possible. The subject must pass into the judgment, and it becomes infected with the relational form. The self-dependence and immediacy, which it claims, are not possessed by its content. Hence in the attempted self-assertion this content drives the sub- ject beyond actual limits, and so begets a process which is infinite and cannot be exhausted. Thus thought's attempt wholly to absorb the subject must fail. It fails because it cannot reform the subject so as to include and exhaust its content. And, in the second place, thought fails because it cannot re- form itself. For, if per impossibile the exhausted content were comprised within a predicate, that predicate still could not bear the character of im- mediacy. I will dwell for a little on both points.