Our single standard, as we saw above, wears various aspects, and I will now proceed briefly to exemplify its detail, {a) If we take, first, an ap- pearance in time, and desire to estimate the amount of its reality, we have, on one side, to consider its harmoniousness. We have to ask, that is, how far, before its contents can take their place as an adjec- tive of the Real, they would require re-arrangement. We have to enquire how far, in other words, these contents are, or are not, self- consistent and system- atic. And then, on the other side, we must have regard to the extent of time, or space, or both, which our appearance occupies.1 Other things being equal, whatever spreads more widely in space, or again lasts longer in time, is therefore more real. But (5), 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 deter- 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 ispect to be mentioned lower down (p. 376).
DEGREES OP TRUTH AND REALITY. 37 1 mined by exclusion from a wider area. Again the generalization nearer sense, being fuller of irre- levancy, will, looked at from this point of view, be more internally discordant. In brief, whether the system and the true individual is sought in temporal existence, or in the realm standing above events, the standard still is the same. 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 con- sisted merely of phenomenal events, and of the laws that somehow reign above them. And in our every- day life we soon transcend this unnatural divorce between principle and fact, (c) We reckon an event to be important in proportion to its effectiveness, so far as its being, that is, spreads in influence beyond the area of its private limits. It is obvious that here the two features, of self-sufficiency and self-tran- scendence, are already discrepant. We reach a higher stage where some existence embodies, or in any way presents in itself, a law and a principle. However, in the mere example and instance of an universal truth, the fact and the law are still essen- tially alien to each other, and the defective character of their union is plainly visible. Our standard moves us on towards an individual with laws of its own, and to laws which form the vital substance of a single existence. And an imperfect appearance of this character we were compelled, in our last chapter, to recognize in the individual habits of the soul. Further in the beauty which presents us with a realized type, we find another form of the union of fact with principle. And, passing from this to conscious life, we are called on still for further uses and fresh applications of our standard. In the $*]2 REALITY.
will of the individual, or of the community, so far as adequately carried out and expressing itself in out- ward fact, we have a new claim to harmonious and self-included reality. And we have to consider in each case the consistency, together with the range and area, of the principle, and the degree up to which it has mastered and passed into existence. And we should find ourselves led on from this, by partial defect, to higher levels of being. We should arrive at the personal relation of the individual to ends theoretical and practical, ends which call for realization, but which from their nature cannot be realized in a finite personality. And, once more here, our standard must be called in when we endea- vour, as we must, to form a comparative estimate. For, apart from the success or failure of the indi- vidual's will, these ideas of ultimate goodness and reality themselves possess, of course, very different values. And we have to measure the amount of discordancy and limitation, which fixes the place to be assigned, in each case, to these various appear- ances of the Absolute.
To some of these provinces of life I shall have to return in later chapters. But there are several points to which, at present, I would draw attention. I would repeat, first, that I am not undertaking to set out completely the different aspects of the world; nor am 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 DEGREES OF TRUTH AND REALITY. 373 exists, or barely does not exist, and for which an idea is false, or else is true — how is it possible to be just to the various orders of appearance? For, if •we are consistent, we shall send the mass of our chief human interests away to some unreal limbo of undistinguished degradation. And, if we are not consistent, yet how can we proceed rationally with- out an intellectual standard? And I think we are driven to this alternative. We must either be incap- able of saying one word on the relative importance of things; we can tell nothing of the comparative meaning, and place in the world, owned by art, science, religion, social life or morality; we are wholly ignorant as to the degrees of truth and reality which these possess, and we cannot even say that for the universe any one of them has any signific- ance, makes any degree of difference, or matters at all. Either this, or else our one-sided view must be revolutionized. But, so far as I see, it can be revolutionized only in one of two ways. We may accept a view of truth and reality such as I have been endeavouring to indicate, or we must boldly subordinate everything to the test of feeling. I do not mean that, beside our former inadequate ideal of truth, we should set up, also and alongside, an independent standard of worth. For this expedient, first, would leave no clear sense to " degrees of truth" or "of reality"; and, in the second place, practically our two standards would tend everywhere to clash. They would collide hopelessly without appeal to any unity above them. Of some religious belief, for example, or of some aesthetic representa- tion, we might be compelled to exclaim, " How' wholly false, and yet how superior to truth, and how much more to us than any possible reality! " And of some successful and wide-embracing theory we might remark that it was absolutely true and utterly despicable, or of some physical facts, perhaps, that they deserved no kind of attention. Such a separa- 374 REALITY.
tion of worth from reality and truth would mutilate our nature, and could end only in irrational compro- mise or oscillation. But this shifting attitude, though common in life, seems here inadmissible; and it was not this that I meant by a subordination to feeling. I pointed to something less possible, but very much more consistent. It would imply the setting up of feeling in some form as an absolute test, not only of value but also of truth and reality. Here, if we took feeling as our end, and identified it with plea- sure, we might assert of some fact, no matter how palpable, This is absolutely nothing; or, because it makes for pain, it is even worse, and is therefore even less than nothing. Or because some truth, however obvious, seemed in our opinion not favour- able to the increase of pleasure, we should have to treat it at once as sheer falsehood and error. And by such an attitude, however impracticable, we should have at least 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 intoler- able confusion of a double test and control, nor can re- lapse into the narrowness, and the inconsistency, of our old mutilated view — we must take courage to accept the other revolution. We must reject wholly the idea that known reality consists in a series of events, external or inward, and that truth merely is correspondence with such a form of existence. We must allow to every appearance alike its own degree of reality, if not also of truth,2 and we must every- 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 ten- dencies. And this is clearly to end in mere momentary caprice, and in anarchy.
2 Whether, and in what sense, every appearance of the Reality has truth, is a point taken up later in Chapter xxvi.
DEGREES OF TRUTH AND REALITY. 375 where 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 ignor- ance and our deficiency that the standard ever could be inapplicable. And, at the cost of repetition, I may be permitted to dwell briefly on this head.
Our standard is Reality in the form of self-exist- ence; 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.1 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 Uni- verse. We are then forced to perceive both the in- consistency of our predicates, and the large extent of outer supplement which we must add, if we wish to make them true. Hence the amount of either wide- ness or consistency gives the degree of reality and also of truth. Or, regarding the same thing from the other side, you may estimate by what is lacking. You may measure the reality of anything by the relative amount of transformation, which would follow if its defects were made good. The more an 1 The reader must not forget here that the inconsistency and distraction, which cannot be felt, is therefore the greatest (p. 364). Peeting is itself a unity and a solution, however incomplete.
37^ REALITY.
appearance, in being corrected, is transmuted and destroyed, the less reality can such an appearance contain; or, to put it otherwise, the less genuinely does it represent the Real. And on this principle we succeeded in attaching a clear sense to that nebul- ous phrase " Validity. " And this standard, in principle at least, is applic- able to every kind of subject-matter. For everything, directly or indirectly, and with a greater or less preservation of its internal unity, has a relative space in Reality. For instance, the mere intensity of a pleasure or pain, beside its occupancy of conscious- ness, has also an outer sphere or halo of 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 DEGREES OF TRUTH AND REALITY. 377 the more vitally it, so to speak, possesses the soul of things, so much the wider in proportion must be that sphere of events which in the end it controls. But, just for this reason, such a principle cannot be handled or seen, nor is it in any way given to out- ward or inward perception. It 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-per- ception as the one known reality. And there is a view which endeavours, on the other side, to con- sider appearance in time as 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 meagre and mutilated fraction, which is therefore also, and in consequence, internally discrepant. And each is based upon one and the same error about the nature of things. We have seen that the separation of the real into idea and existence is a division admis- sible only within the world of appearance. In the Absolute every such distinction must be merged and disappears. But the disappearance of each aspect, we insisted also, meant the satisfaction of its claims in full. And hence, though how in detail we were unable to point out, either side must come together with its opposite in the Whole. There thought and sense alike find each its complement in the other. The principle that reality can wholly consist in one of these two sides of appearance, we therefore reject as a fundamental error.
Let us consider more closely the two delusions 37$ REALITY.
37$ REALITY.
which have branched from this stem. The first of these, perceiving that the series of events is essen- tial, 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, appear- ance in the temporal series is found necessary for reality * — a premise which is true — an unconscious passage is made, from this truth, to a vicious con- clusion. To appear is construed to imply appearance always, so to speak, in 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 per- ception 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 ap- pears at any one moment, is, as such, self-contra- dictory. And, from the other side, the less a character is able, as such, to appear — the less its necessary manifestation can be narrowed in time or in space — so much the more is it capable of both expansion and inner harmony. But these two features, as we saw, are the marks of reality.
And the second of the mistakes is like the first. Appearance, once more, is falsely identified with presentation, as such, to sense; and a wrong con- clusion is, once more, drawn from this basis. But the error now proceeds in an 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 1 Compare here Chapters xix. and xxiii.
DEGREES OF TRUTH AND REALITY. 379 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 conse- quence set free, and is entirely insubordinate. And its concrete character now evidently determines, and infects from the outside, whatever mere thought we are endeavouring to predicate of the Real. But the union in all perception of thought with sense, the co-presence everywhere in all appearances of fact with ideality — this is the one foundation of truth. And, when we add to this the saving distinction that to have existence need not mean to exist, and that to be realized in time is not always to be visible by any sense, we have made ourselves secure against the worst of errors. From this we are soon led to 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 1 The position which, in estimating value, is to be assigned to pleasure and pain will Ihj discussed in Chapter xxv.
380 REALITY.
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,1 since this series supplies the one source of all ideal content. We may say, roughly and with sufficient accuracy, that there is nothing in thought, whether it be matter or relations, except that which is derived from perception. And, in the second place, it is only by starting from the pre- sented basis that we construct our system of phen- omena in space and time. We certainly perceived (Chapter xviii.) that any such constructed unity was but relative, imperfect, and partial. But, none the less, a building up of the sense-world from the ground of actual presentation is a condition of all our knowledge. It is not true that everything, even if temporal, has a place in our one " real " order of space or time. But, indirectly or directly, every known element must be connected with its sequence of events, and, at least in some sense, must show itself even there. The test of truth after all, we may say, lies in presented fact.
We should here try to avoid a serious mistake. Without existence we have perceived that thought is incomplete; but this does not mean that, without existence, mere thought in itself is complete fully, and that existence to this super-adds an alien but necessary completion. For we have found in principle that, if anything were perfect, it would not gain by an addition made from the outside. And, here in particular, thought's first object, in its pur- suit of actual fact, is precisely the enlarging and making harmonious of its own ideal content. And the reason for this, as soon as we consider it, is obvious. The dollar, merely thought of or imagined, is comparatively abstract and void of properties. But the dollar, verified in space, has got its place 1 The series, in its proper character, is, of course, an ideal con- struction. But we may disregard that here.
DEGREES OF TRUTH AND REALITY. 38 1 in, and is determined by, an enormous construction of things. And to suppose that the concrete con- text of these relations in no sense qualifies its inner content, or that this qualification is a matter of in- difference 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 re- lated also to the phenomenal system of events in time. It is related to them, but without any connection with the internal order and arrangements of their sys- tem. But this means that our mere idea is determined by that system entirely from the outside. And it will therefore itself be permeated internally, and so de- stroyed, by the contingency forced into its content through these chaotic relations. Considered from this side, a thought, if it actually were bare, would stand at a level lower than the, so-called, chance facts of sense. For in the latter we have, at least, some internal connection with the context, and already a fixed relation of universals, however impure.
All reality must be revealed in the world of events; and that is most real which, within such an order or orders, finds least foreign to itself. Hence, if other things remain equal, a definite place in, and connection with, the temporal system gives increase of reality. For thus the relations to other elements, which must in any case determine, determine, at least to some extent, internally. And thus the imaginary, so far, must be poorer than the percep- tible fact; or, in other words, it is compulsorily qualified by a wider area of alien and destructive relations. I have emphasized " if other things re- main equal," for this restriction is important. There is imagination which is higher, and more true, and most emphatically more real, than any single fact 382 REALITY.