Let us consider first the subject that is presented. It is a confused whole that, so far as we make it an object, passes into a congeries of qualities and rela- tions. And thought desires to transform this con- geries into a system. But, to understand the subject, we have at once to pass outside it in time, and again also in space. On the other hand these external relations do not end, and from their own nature they cannot end. Exhaustion is not merely impracticable, it is essentially impossible. And this obstacle would be enough; but this is not all. In- side the qualities, which we took first as solid end- points of the relations, an infinite process breaks out. In order to understand, we are forced to dis- tinguish to the end, and we never get to that which is itself apart from distinction. Or we may put the difficulty otherwise thus. We can neither take the terms with their relations as a whole that is self- evident, that stands by itself, and that calls for no further account; nor, on the other side, when we distinguish, can we avoid the endless search for the relation between the relation and its terms.1 1 For this see above, Chapter in.
THOUGHT AND REALITY. 1 79 Thus thought cannot get the content into a har- monious system. And in the next place, even if it did so, that system would not be the subject It would either be a maze of relations, a maze with a plan, of which for ever we made the circuit; or otherwise it would wholly lose the relational form. Our impossible process, in the first place, would assuredly have truth distinguished from its reality. For it could avoid this only by coming to us bodily and all at once, and, further, by suppressing entirely any distinction between subject and predicate. But, if in this way thought became immediate, it would lose its own character. It would be a system of relations no longer, but would have become an individual experience. And the Other would cer- tainly have been absorbed, but thought itself no less would have been swallowed up and resolved into an Other.
Thought's relational content can never be the same as the subject, either as that subject appears or as it really is. The reality that is presented is taken up by thought in a form not adequate to its nature, and beyond which its nature must appear as an Other. But, to come at last in full view of the solution of our problem, this nature also is the nature which thought wants for itself. It is the character which even mere thinking desires to possess, and which in all its aspects exists within thought already, though in an incomplete form. And our main result is briefly this. The end, which would satisfy mere truth-seeking, would do so just because it had the features possessed by reality. It would have to be an immediate, self-dependent, all-inclusive individ- ual. But, in reaching this perfection, and in the act of reaching it, thought would lose its own char- acter. Thought does desire such individuality, that is precisely what it aims at. But individuality, on the other hand, cannot be gained while we are con- fined to relations.
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OA 1 80 REALITY.
Still we may be told that we are far from the solu- tion of our problem. The fact of thoughts desiring a foreign perfection, we may hear, is precisely the old difficulty. If thought desires this, then it is no Other, for we desire only what we know. The object of thought's desire cannot, hence, be a foreign object; for what is an object is, therefore, not foreign. But we reply that we have penetrated below the surface of any such dilemma. Thought desires for its content the character which makes reality. These features, if realized, would destroy mere thought; and hence they are an Other beyond thought. But thought, nevertheless, can desire them, because its content has them already in an incomplete form. And in desire for the completion of what one has there is no contradiction. Here is the solution of our difficulty.
The relational form is a compromise on which thought stands, and which it developes. It is an attempt to unite differences which have broken out of the felt totality.1 Differences forced together by an underlying identity, and a compromise between the plurality and the unity — this is the essence of relation. But the differences remain independent, for they cannot be made to resolve themselves into their own relation. For, if so, they would perish, and their relation would perish with them. Or, otherwise, their outstanding plurality would still remain unreconciled with their unity, and so within the relation would beget the infinite process. The relation, on the other side, does not exist beyond the terms; for, in that case, itself would be a new term which would aggravate the distraction. But again, it cannot lose itself within the terms; for, if so, where is their common unity and their relation? They would in this case not be related, but would fall apart. Thus the whole relational perception 1 On this point see Chapter iil THOUGHT AND REALITY. l8l joins various characters. It has the feature of im- mediacy and self-dependence; for the terms are given to it and not constituted by it. It possesses again the character of plurality. And as represent- ing the primitive felt whole, it has once more the character of a comprehending unity — a unity, how- ever, not constituted by the differences, but added from without. And, even against its wish, it has further a restless infinitude; for such infinitude is the very result of its practical compromise. And thought desires, retaining these features, to reduce them to harmony. It aims at an all-inclusive whole, not in conflict with its elements, and at elements subordinate to a self-dependent whole. Hence neither the aspect of unity, nor of plurality, nor of both these features in one, is really foreign to thought. There is nothing foreign that thought wants in desiring to be a whole, to comprehend everything, and yet to include and be superior to discord. But, on the other hand, such a completion, as we have seen, would prove destructive; such an end would emphatically make an end of mere thought It would bring the ideal content into a form which would be reality itself, and where mere truth and mere thought would certainly perish. Thought seeks to possess in its object that whole character of which it already owns the separate features. These features it cannot combine satis- factorily, though it has the idea, and even the partial experience, of their complete combination. And, if the object were made perfect, it would forthwith become reality, but would cease forthwith to be an object. It is this completion of thought be- yond thought which remains for ever an Other. Thought can form the idea of an apprehension, something like feeling in directness, which contains all the character sought by its relational efforts. Thought can understand that, to reach its goal, it must get beyond relations. Yet in its nature it can 1 82 REALITY.
find no other working means of progress. Hence it perceives that somehow this relational side of its nature must be merged and must include somehow the other side. Such a fusion would compel thought to lose and to transcend its proper self. And the nature of this fusion thought can apprehend in vague generality, but not in detail; and it can see the reason why a detailed apprehension is impos- sible. Such anticipated self-transcendence is an Other; but to assert that Other is not a self-con- tradiction.
Hence in our Absolute thought can find its Other without inconsistency. The entire reality will be merely the object thought out, but thought out in such a way that mere thinking is absorbed. This same reality will be feeling that is satisfied com- pletely. In its direct experience we get restored with interest every feature lost by the disruption of our primitive felt whole. We possess the immediacy and the strength of simple apprehension, no longer forced by its own inconsistencies to pass into the infinite process. And again volition, if willed out, becomes our Absolute. For we reach there the identity of idea and reality, not too poor but too rich for division of its elements. Feeling, thought, and volition have all defects which suggest something higher. But in that higher unity no fraction of any- thing is lost. For each one-sided aspect, to gain itself, blends with that which seemed opposite, and the product of this fusion keeps the riches of all. The one reality, we may say from our human point of view, was present in each aspect in a form which does not satisfy. To work out its full nature it has sunk itself into these differences. But in each it longs for that absolute self-fruition which comes only when the self bursts its limits and blends with another finite self. This desire of each element for a perfection which implies fusion with others, is not self-contradictory. It is rather an effort to remove THOUGHT AND REALITY. 1 83 a present state of inconsistency, to remain in which would indeed be fixed self-contradiction.
Now, if it is objected that such an Absolute is the Thing-in-itself, I must doubt if the objector can understand. How a whole which comprehends everything can deserve that title is past my conjec- ture. And, if I am told that the differences are lost in this whole, and yet the differences are, and must therefore be left outside — I must reply to this charge by a counter-charge of thoughtless confusion. For the differences are not lost, but are all contained in the whole. The fact that more is included there than these several, isolated, differences hardly proves that these differences are not there at all. When an element is joined to another in a whole of experi- ence, then, on the whole, and for the whole, their mere specialities need not exist; but, none the less, each element in its own partial experience may re- tain its own speciality. "Yes; but these partial experiences," I may be told, " will at all events fall outside the whole." Surely no such consequence follows. The self-consciousness of the part, its con- sciousness of itself even in opposition to the whole — all will be contained within the one absorbing experience. For this will embrace all self-con- sciousness harmonized, though, as such, transmuted and suppressed. We cannot possibly construe, I admit, such an experience to ourselves. We cannot imagine how in detail its outline is filled up. But to say that it is real, and that it unites certain general characters within the living system of one undivided apprehension, is within our power. The assertion of this Absolute's reality I hope in the sequel to justify. Here (if I have not failed) I have shown that, at least from the point of view of thinking, it is free from self-contradiction. The justification for thought of an Other may help both to explain and to bury the Thing-in-itself.
CHAPTER XVI.
ERROR.
We have so far sketched in outline the Absolute which we have been forced to accept, and we have pointed out the general way in which thought may fall within it. We must address ourselves now to a series of formidable objections. If our Absolute is possible in itself, it seems hardly possible as things are. For there are undeniable facts with which it does not seem compatible. Error and evil, space, time, chance and mutability, and the unique particu- larity of the " this " and the 4< mine " — all these appear to fall outside an individual experience. To explain them away or to explain them, one of these courses seems necessary, and yet both seem impos- sible. And this is a point on which I am anxious to be clearly understood. I reject the offered dilemma, and deny the necessity of a choice be- tween these two courses. I fully recognise the facts, I do not make the smallest attempt to explain their origin, and I emphatically deny the need for such an explanation. In the first place to show how and why the universe is so that finite existence belongs to it, is utterly impossible. That would imply an understanding of the whole not practicable for a mere part. It would mean a view by the finite from the Absolute's point of view, and in that consummation the finite would have been transmuted and destroyed. But, in the second place, such an understanding is wholly unnecessary. We have not to choose between accounting for everything ERROR. 185 on one side and on the other side admitting it as a disproof of our doctrine of the Absolute. Such an alternative is not logical. If you wish to refute a wide theory based on general grounds, it is idle merely to produce facts which upon it are not ex- plained. For the inability to explain these may be simply our failure in particular information, and it need imply nothing worse than confirmation lacking to the theory. The facts become an objection to the doctrine when they are incompatible with some part of it; while, if they merely remain outside, that points to incompleteness in detail and not falsity in prin- ciple. A general doctrine is not destroyed by what we fail to understand. It is destroyed only by that which we actually do understand, and can show to be inconsistent and discrepant with the theory adopted.
And this is the real issue here. Error and evil are no disproof of our absolute experience so long as we merely fail to see how in detail it comprehends them. They are a disproof when their nature is understood in such a way as to collide with the Absolute. And the question is whether this under- standing of them is correct It is here that I confidently join issue. If on this subject there exists a false persuasion of knowledge, I urge that it lies on the side of the objector. I maintain that we know nothing of these various forms of the finite which shows them incompatible with that Absolute, for the accepting of which we have general ground. And I meet the denial of this position by pointing out assumed knowledge where really there is ignorance. It is the objector who, if any one, asserts omniscience. It is he who claims to understand both the infinite and the finite, so as to be aware and to be assured of their incompati- bility. And I think that he much overestimates the extent of human power. We cannot know that the finite is in collision with the Absolute. And if 1 86 REALITV.
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we cannot, and if, for all we understand, the two are at one and harmonious — then our conclusion is proved fully. For we have a general assurance that reality, has a certain nature, and, on the other side, against that assurance we have to set nothing, nothing other than our ignorance. But an assur- ance, against which there is nothing to be set, must surely be accepted. And I will begin first with Error.
Error is without any question a dangerous sub- ject, and the chief difficulty is as follows. We cannot, on the one hand, accept anything between non-existence and reality, while, on the other hand, error obstinately refuses to be either. It persistently attempts to maintain a third position, which appears nowhere to exist, and yet somehow is occupied. In false appearance there is something attributed to the real which does not belong to it. But if the appearance is not real, then it is not false appear- ance, because it is nothing. On the other hand, if it is false, it must therefore be true reality, for it is something which is. And this dilemma at first sight seems insoluble. Or, to put it otherwise, an appearance, which is, must fall somewhere. But error, because it is false, cannot belong to the Absolute; and, again, it cannot appertain to the finite subject, because that, with all its contents, cannot fall outside the Absolute; at least, if it did, it would be nothing. And so error has no home, it has no place in existence; and yet, for all that, it exists. And for this reason it has occasioned much doubt and difficulty.
For Psychology and for Logic the problem is much easier. Error can be identified with wrong inference, and can be compared on one side with a typical model; while, on the other side, we can show by what steps it originates. But these en- quiries, however interesting, would not much assist us, and we must endeavour here to face the problem ERROR. 187 more directly. We must take our stand on the distinction between idea and reality.
Error is the same as false appearance,1 or (if the reader objects to this) it is at any rate one kind of false appearance. Now appearance is content not atone with its existence, a "what" loosened from its " that." And in this sense we have seen that every truth is appearance, since in it we have divorce of quality from being (p. 163). The idea which is true is the adjective of reality so far as its content goes. It, so far, is restored, and belongs, to existence. But an idea has also another side, its own private being as something which is and happens. And an idea, as content, is alienated from this its own existence as an event. Even where you take a presented whole, and predicate one or more features, our account still holds good. For the content predicated has now become alien to its existence. On the one side it has not been left in simple unity with the whole, nor again is it predicated so far as changed from a mere feature into another and separate fact. In " sugar is sweet" the sweetness asserted of the sugar is not the sweetness so far as divided from it and turned into a second thing in our minds. This thing has its own being there, and to predicate it, as such, of the sugar would clearly be absurd. In respect of its own existence the idea is therefore always a mere appearance. But this character of divorce from its private reality becomes usually still more patent, where the idea is not taken from presentation but supplied by reproduction. Wherever the predicate is seen to be supplied from an image, the existence of that image can be seen at once not to be the predicate. It is something clearly left outside of the judgment and quite disregarded.* Appearance then will be the looseness of char- * See more, Chapter xxvl • Compare p. 164.
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acter from being, the distinction of immediate oneness into two sides, a " that " and a " what." And this looseness tends further to harden into fracture and into the separation of two sundered existences. Appearance will be truth when a content, made alien to its own being, is related to some fact which accepts its qualification. The true idea is appear- ance in respect of its own being as fact and event, but is reality in connection with other being which it qualifies. Error, on the other hand, is content made loose from its own reality, and related to a reality with which it is discrepant. It is the re- jection of an idea by existence which is not the existence of the idea as made loose. It is the repulse by a substantive of a liberated adjective.1 Thus it is an appearance which not only appears, but is false. It is in other words the collision of a mere idea with reality.
There are serious problems with regard both to error and truth, and the distinction between them, which challenge our scrutiny. I think it better however to defer these to later chapters. I will therefore limit here the enquiry, so far as is possible, and will consider two main questions. Error is content neither at one with its own being, nor otherwise allowed to be an adjective of the real. If so, we must ask (i) why it cannot be accepted by reality, and (2) how it still actually can belong to reality; for we have seen that this last conclusion is necessary.
1. Error is rejected by reality because that is harmonious, and is taken necessarily to be so, while error, on the other hand, is self-contradictory. I do not mean that it is a content merely not at one (if that were possible) with its own mere being.2 I 1 Whether the adjective has been liberated from this substan- tive or from another makes no difference.
2 Tn the end no finite predicate or subject can possibly be harn onious.
ERROR. 189 mean that its inner character, as ideal, is itself dis- cordant and self-discrepant But I should prefer not to call error a predicate which contradicts itself. For that might be taken as a statement that the contradiction already is present in the mere pre- dicate, before judgment is attempted; and this, if defensible, would be misleading. Error is the qualification of a reality in such a way that in the result it has an inconsistent content, which for that reason is rejected. Where existence has a 44 what " colliding within itself, there the predication of this "what" is an erroneous judgment. If a reality is self-consistent, and its further determina- tion has introduced discord, there the addition is the mistake, and the reality is unaffected. It is unaffected, however, solely on the assumption that its own nature in no way suggested and called in the discordant. For otherwise the whole result is in- fected with falseness, and the reality could never have been pure from discrepancy.1 It will perhaps tend to make clearer this general view of error if I defend it against some possible objections. Error is supposed by some persons to be a departure from experience, or from what is given merely. It is again taken sometimes as the confusion of internal image with outward sensation. But any such views are of course most superficial. Quite apart from the difficulty of finding anything merely given, and the impossibility of always using actual present sensation as a test of truth — without noticing the strange prejudice that outward sensa- tions are never false, and the dull blindness which fails to realize that the 4< inward " is a fact just as solid as the "outward" — we may dismiss the whole objection. For, if the given has a content which is not harmonious, then, no matter in what sense we 1 The doctrine here is stated subject to correction in Chapter xxiv. No finite predicate or subject can really be self-consistent I9O REALITY.
like to take " given/' that content is not real. And any attempt, either to deny this, or to maintain that in the given there is never discrepancy, may be left to itself. But I will go on to consider the same view as it wears a more plausible form. " We do not," I may be told, " add or take away predic- ates simply at our pleasure. We do not, so long as this arbitrary result does not visibly contradict itself, consider it true." And I have not said that we should do this.
Outside known truth and error we may, of course, have simple ignorance.1 An assertion, that is, must in every case be right or be wrong; but, for us and for the present, it may not yet be either. Still, on the other hand, we do know that, if the statement is an error, it will be so because its content collides internally. " But this " (an objector may reply) " is really not the case. Take the statement that at a certain time an event did, or did not, happen. This would be erroneous because of disagreement with fact, and not always because it is inconsistent with itself." Still I must insist that we have some further reason for condemning this want of corre- spondence with fact. For why, apart from such a reason, should either we or the fact make an ob- jection to this defect? Suppose that when William has been hung, I assert that it was John. My assertion will then be false, because the reality does not admit of both events, and because William is certain. And if so, then after all my error surely will consist in giving to the real a self- discrepant content. For otherwise, when John is suggested, I could not reject the idea. I could only say that certainly it was William, and might also, for all that I knew, be John too. But in our actual practice we proceed thus: since " both John and William " forms a discordant content, that statement is in