We have seen that, except in the Absolute in which Nature is merged, we have no right to assert that all Nature has unity. I will now add a few words on some other points which may call for ex- planation. We may be asked, for example, whether Nature is finite or infinite; and we may first en- deavour to clear our ideas on this subject. There is of course, as we know, a great difficulty on either side. If Nature is infinite, we have the absurdity of a something which exists, and still does not exist. For actual existence is, obviously, all finite. But, 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 meta- physics an absolute vacuum is nonsense. Like a mere piece of empty Time, it is a sheer self-contradiction; for it presupposes certain internal distin< lions, and then in the same breath denies them.
NATURE. 291 NATURE. 291 on the other hand, if Nature is finite, then Nature must have an end; and this again is impossible. For a limit of extension must be relative to exten- sion beyond. And to fall back on empty space, will not help us at all. For this (itself a mere absurdity) repeats the dilemma in an aggravated form. It is itself both something and nothing, is essentially limited and yet, on the other side, without end.
But we cannot escape the conclusion that Nature is infinite. And this will be true not 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 pass- ing. Nor does this hold only with regard to present existence, for the past and future of these worlds has also no fixed boundary in space. Nor, once again, is this a character peculiar to the extended. Any finite whole, with its incomplete conjunction of qualities and relations, entails a process of indefinite tran- sition beyond its limits as a consequence. But with the extended, more than anything, this self-trans- cendence 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 meaning. It would be once more the endeavour to be something and yet nothing, and to find an existence which does not exist. And thus we are forced to maintain that every Nature must be finite. The dilemma stares us in the face, and brings home to us the fact that all Nature, as such, is an untrue appearance. It is the way in which a mere part of the Reality shows itself, a way essential and true when taken up into and trans- muted by a fuller totality, but, considered by itself, inconsistent and lapsing beyond its own being. The essence of the relative is to have and to come to an end, but, at the same time, to end always in a self- 292 REALITY.
292 REALITY.
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 trans- cends it. In its isolation as a phenomenon Nature is both finite and infinite, and so proclaims itself untrue. And, when this contradiction is solved, both its characters disappear into something beyond both. And it is perhaps not necessary to dwell further on the infinity of Nature.
And, passing next to the question of what is called Uniformity, I shall dismiss this almost at once. For there is, in part, no necessity for meta- physics to deal with it, and, in part, we must return to it in the following chapter. But, however uni- formity is understood, in the main we must be sceptical, and stand aloof. I do not see how it can be shown that the amount of matter and motion, whether in any one world or in all, remains always the same. Nor do I understand how we can know that any world remains the same in its sensible 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 postul- ates are satisfied. This order in the world need not mean that, in each Nature, the same characters remain. It implies, in the first place, that all changes are subject to the identity of the one Reality. But that by itself seems consistent with almost indefinite variation in the several worlds. And, in the second place, order must involve the possibility of experience in finite subjects. Order, therefore, excludes all change which would make each world unintelligible through want of stability. But this stability, in the end, does not seem to require more than a limited amount of identity, existing from time to time in the sensations which happen. And, thirdly, in NATURE. 293 phenomenal sequence the law of Causation must remain unbroken. But this, again, comes to very little. For the law of Causation does not assert that in existence we have always the same causes and effects. It insists only that, given one, we must inevitably have the other. And thus the Uniformity of Nature cannot warrant the assumption that the world of sense is uniform. Its guarantee is in that respect partly non-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 separa- tion of one element from the whole is both justifi- able and necessary. In order to understand the co- existence and sequence of phenomena in space, the conditions of these are made objects of independent study. But to take such conditions for hard reali- ties standing by themselves, is to deviate into uncritical and barbarous metaphysics.
Nature apart from and outside of the Absolute is nothing. It has its being in that process of intestine division, through which the whole world of appear- ance consists. And in this realm, where aspects fall asunder, where being is distinguished from thought, and the self from the not- self, Nature marks one extreme. It is the aspect most opposed to self- dependence and unity. It is the world of those particulars which stand furthest from possessing individuality, and we may call it the region of externality and chance. Compulsion from the out- 1 For a further consideration of these points see Chapter x\in.
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side, and a movement not their own, is the law of its elements; and its events seem devoid of an in- ternal meaning. To exist and to happen, and yet not to realize an end, or as a member to subserve some ideal whole, we saw (Chapter xix.) was to be contingent. And in the mere physical world the nearest approach to this character can be found. But we can deal better with such questions in a later context. We shall have hereafter to discuss the connection of soul with body, and the existence :>f a system of ends in Nature. The work of this chapter has been done, if we have been able to show the subordination of Nature as one element within the Whole.
CHAPTER XXIII.
BODY AND SOUL.
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, distinc- tions set up and held apart in the Whole. And fully to understand the relation between them would be, in the end, to grasp how they came together into one. And, since this is impossible for our know- ledge, any view about their connection remains im- perfect.
But this failure to comprehend gives no ground for an objection against our Absolute. It is no dis- proof of a theory (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 objec- tion. And things are still worse where there are aspects which positively collide with the main con- clusion. But neither of these grounds of objection holds good against ourselves. Upon the view which we have found to be true of the Absolute, we 296 REALITY.
can see how and why some questions cannot possibly be answered. And in particular this relation of body and soul offers nothing inconsistent with our 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 are different, and which have existence each by itself, and each in its own right. And then, of course, their connection becomes in- comprehensible, and we strive in vain to see how one can 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 connec- tion is now viewed as indirect, and as dependent on something else to which both series belong. But, Wx.ile each side retains its reality and self-subsist- ence, they, of course, cannot come together; and, on the other hand, if they come together, it is be- cause they have been transformed, and are not things, but appearances. Still this last is a con- clusion for which many of us are not prepared. If soul and body are not two " things," the mistake, we fancy, has lain wholly on the side of the soul.
For the body at all events seems a thing, while the soul is unsubstantial. And so, dropping influence altogether, we make the soul a kind of adjective supported by the body. Or, since, after all, adjec- tives must qualify their substantives, we turn the soul into a kind of immaterial secretion, ejected and, BODY AND SOUL. 297 because "out," making no difference to the organ. Nor do we always desert this view when u 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 criticise in detail views, from most of which we could learn nothing. It will be clear at once, from the results of preceding chapters, that neither body nor soul can be more than appear- ance. And I will attempt forthwith to point out the peculiar nature of each, and the manner in which they are connected with, and influence, each other. It would be useless to touch the second question, until we have endeavoured to get our minds clear on the first What is a body? In our last cnapter we have anticipated the answer. A body is a part of the physical world, and we have seen that Nature by itself is wholly unreal. It was an aspect of the Whole, set apart by abstraction, and, for some pur- poses, taken as independent reality. So that, in saying that a body is one piece of Nature, we have at once pointed out that it is no more than appear- ance. It is an intellectual construction out of material which is not self-subsistont. 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.
1 I shall have to say something more on this point lower down. The bodies which wc know have also continuity in space. Whether this is essential will be discussed hereafter.
298 REALITY And I think, for metaphysics, it is better also to make relation to a soul essential for a body (Chapter xxii.). But 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 make- shift materials the particular body is built. It is a construction riddled by inconsistencies, a working point of view, which is of course quite indispensable, but which cannot justify a claim to be more than appearance.
And the soul is clearly no more self-subsistent than the body. It is, on its side also, a purely phenomenal existence, an appearance incomplete and inconsistent, and with no power to maintain itself as an independent " thing." The criticism of our First Book has destroyed every claim of the self to be, or to correspond to, true reality. And the only task here before us is, accepting this result, to attempt to fix clearly the meaning of a soul. I will first make a brief statement, and then endeavour to explain it and to defend it against objections. The soul1 is a finite centre of immediate experience, possessed of a certain temporal continuity of exist- ence, and again of a certain identity in character. And the word " immediate " is emphatic. The soul is a particular group of psychical events, so far as these events are taken merely as happening in time. It excludes consideration of their content, so far as this content (whether in thought or volition or feeling) qualifies something beyond the serial exist- ence of these events. Take the whole experience of BODY AND SOUL. 299 BODY AND SOUL. 299 any moment, one entire " this- now," as it comes, regard that experience as changed and as continued in time, consider its character solely as happening, and, again, as further influencing the course of its own changes — this is perhaps the readiest way of defining a soul.1 But I must endeavour to draw this out, and briefly to explain it.
It is not enough to be clear that the soul is pheno- menal, in the sense of being 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 com- plete bewilderment. And a frequent error is to define what is " psychical " so widely as to exclude any chance of a rational result For all objects and aims, which come before me, are in one sense the states of my soul. Hence, if this sense is not ex- cluded, my body and the whole world become " psychical " phenomena; and amid this confusion my soul itself seeks an unintelligible place as one state of itself. What is most important is to dis- tinguish the soul's existence from what fills it, and yet there are few points, perhaps, on which neglect is more common. And we may bring the question home thus. If we were to assume (Chapter 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, after- wards, let us consider the same thing from outside, 1 I have for the moment excluded relation to a body. It is better not to define the soul as "the farts immediately experi- enced within one organism " for several reasons. I shall return to this point.
300 REALITY.
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 ex- perience— it makes no difference here whether I myself or another person considers them — cannot possibly be my soul, unless my soul is to be as large as the total Universe. For other bodies and souls, and God himself, are (so far as I know them) all states of my mind, and in this sense make part of my particular being. And we are led at once to the distinction, which we noticed before (Chapter xxi.), between the diverse aspects of content and of psychical existence. Our experience in short is, essentially and very largely, ideal. It shows an ideal process which, beginning from the unity of feeling, produces the differences of self and not-self, and separates the divisions of the world from themselves BODY AND SOUL. 3OI 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 " ex- perience," to me must be nothing. And, if you push home the question as to their given existence, you can find it nowhere except in a state of my soul. When 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 ex- istence 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. The two sides of fact, and of content working loose from that fact, are essential to each other. But the essence of the second is disruption of a "what" from a " that," 1 I have tried to sketch the main development in Afittd, as referred to above.
302 REALITY.
while in the union of these aspects the former has its life.
The soul is not the contents which appear in its states, but, on the other 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 develope 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.
We have now been led to two results. The soul is certainly not all that which is present in experience, nor, on the other hand, can it consist in mere expe- rience itself, It cannot be actual feeling, or that im- mediate unity of quality and being which comes in the "this" (Chapter xix.). The soul is not these things, and we must now try to say what it is. It is one of these same personal centres, not taken at an instant, but regarded as a " thing." It is a feeling whole which is considered to continue in time, and to maintain a certain sameness. And the soul is, therefore, not presented fact, but is an ideal con- struction which transcends what is given. It is 1 I have said something on this in Mind, XII. 362-3.
BODY AND SOUL. 303 emphatically the result of an ideal process; but this process, on the other hand, has been arbitrarily arrested at a very low point. Take a fleeting moment of your " given," and then, from the basis of a personal identity of feeling, enlarge this moment by other moments and build up a M 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 essen- tially ideal. It has transcended the given moment, and has spread out its existence beyond that which is " actual" or could ever be experienced. And by its relations and connections of 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 applica- tion is founded on and limited by no principle, the soul in the end must be judged to be rooted in artifice. It is a series, which depends on i 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 304 REALITY.
as wide as tne 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 yxsX. to that ex- tent to which it serves as the adjective of a temporal series — serves to make the " thisness " of the series of. a certain kind, and to modify its past and its future " thisness." But, beyond this, experience is taken merely to be present to the soul and operative within it. And the soul exists precisely so far as the ab- straction is maintained. Its life endures only so 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 appear- ance.
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 dis- crepancy with its " that " — therefore its whole posi- tion is throughout inconsistent and untenable. It is an arrangement natural and necessary, but for all that phenomenal and illusive, a makeshift, valuable but still not genuine reality. And, looked at by itself, the soul is an abstraction and mutilation. It is the arbitrary use of material for a particular pur- pose. And it persists only by refusing to see more in itself than subserves its own existence.
It may be instructive, before we go on, to regard the same question from the side of the Absolute. Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that in BODY AND SOUL. 305 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-composi- tion, in which their individualities would be trans- muted and absorbed (Chapter xvi.). For we have seen that the Absolute is the union of content and existence. It stands at a level above, and com- prehending, those distinctions and relations in which the imperfect unity of feeling is dissipated. Let us then take the indefinite plurality of the " this-nows," or immediate experiences, as the basis and starting- point, and, on the other side, let us take the Absolute as the end, and let us view the region between as a process from the first to the second. It will be a field of struggle in which content is divorced from, and strives once more towards, unity with being. Our assumption in part will be false, since (as we have seen) the immediately given is already incon- sistent.1 But, in order to instruct ourselves, let us suppose here that the u fact " of experience is real,