wholly false, and yet how superior to truth, and how much more to us than any possible reality! " And of some successful and wide-embracing theory we might remark that it was absolutely true and utterly despicable, or of some physical facts, perhaps, that they deserved no kind of attention. Such a separation of worth from reality and truth would mutilate our nature, and could end only in irrational compromise or oscillation. But this shifting attitude, though common in life, seems here inadmissible; and it was not this that I meant by a subordination to feeling. I pointed to something less possible, but very much more consistent. It would imply the setting up of feeling in some form as an absolute test, not only of value but also of truth and reality. Here, if we took feeling as our end, and identified it with pleasure, we might assert of some fact, no matter how palpable, This is absolutely nothing; or, because it makes for pain, it is even worse, and is therefore even less than nothing. Or because some truth, however obvious, seemed in our opinion not favourable to the increase of pleasure, we should have to treat it at once as sheer falsehood and error. And by such an attitude, however impracticable, we should have at least tried to introduce some sort of unity and meaning into our world.1 But if to make mere feeling our one standard is in the end impossible, if we cannot rest in the intolerable confusion of a double test and control, nor can relapse into the narrowness, and the inconsistency, of our old mutilated view — we must take courage to accept the other revolution. We must reject wholly the idea that known reality consists in a series of events, external or inward, and that truth merely is correspondence with such a form of existence. 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 tendencies. 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.
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 ignorance and our deficiency that the standard ever could be inapplicable. And, at the cost of repetition, I may be permitted to dwell briefly on this head.
Our standard is Reality in the form of self-existence; and this, given plurality and relations, means an individual system. Now we have shown that no perfect system can possibly be finite, because any limitation from the outside infects the inner content with dependence on what is alien. And hence the marks of harmony and expansion are two aspects of one principle. With regard to harmony (other things remaining the same), that which has extended over and absorbed a greater area of the external, will internally be less divided.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 Universe. We are then forced to perceive both the inconsistency of our predicates, and the large extent of outer supplement which we must add, if we wish to make them true. Hence the amount of either wideness or consistency gives the degree of reality and also of truth. Or, regarding the same thing from the other side, you may estimate by what is lacking. You may measure the reality of anything by the relative amount of transformation, which would follow if its defects were made good. 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.
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 nebulous phrase " Validity. " And this standard, in principle at least, is applicable to every kind of subject-matter. For everything, directly or indirectly, and with a greater or less preservation of its internal unity, has a relative space in Reality. For instance, the mere intensity of a pleasure or pain, beside its occupancy of consciousness, has also an outer sphere or halo of effects. And in some low sense these effects make a part of, or at least belong to, its being. And with facts of perception their extent both in time, and also in space, obviously gives us a point of comparison between them. If, again, we take an abstract truth, which, as such, nowhere has existence, we can consider the comparative area of its working influence. And, if we were inclined to feel a doubt as to the reality of such principles, we might correct ourselves thus. Imagine everything which they represent removed from the universe, and then attempt to maintain that this removal makes no real difference. And, as we proceed further, a social system, conscious in its personal members of a will carried out, submits itself naturally to our test. We must notice here the higher development of concrete internal unity.
For we find an individuality, subordinating to itself outward fact, though not, as such, properly visible within it. This superiority to mere appearance in the temporal series is carried to a higher degree as we advance into the worlds of religion, speculation, and art. The inward principle may here become far wider, and have an intenser unity of its own; but, on the side of temporal existence, it cannot possibly exhibit itself as such. The higher the principle, and the more vitally it, so to speak, possesses the soul of things, so much the wider in proportion must be that sphere of events which in the end it controls. But, just for this reason, such a principle cannot be handled or seen, nor is it in any way given to outward or inward perception. It is only the meaner realities which can ever be so revealed, and which are able to be verified as sensible facts.
And it is only a standard such as ours which can assign its proper rank to sense-presentation. It is solely by accepting such a test that we are able to avoid two gross and opposite mistakes. There is a view which takes, or attempts to take, sense-perception as the one known reality. And there is a view which endeavours, on the other side, to consider appearance in time as something indifferent. It tries to find reality in the world of insensible thought. Both mistakes lead, in the end, to a like false result, and both imply, and are rooted in, the same principle of error. In the end each would force us to embrace as complete reality a 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 admissible only within the world of appearance. In the Absolute every such distinction must be merged and disappears. But the disappearance of each aspect, we insisted also, meant the satisfaction of its claims in full. And hence, though how in detail we were unable to point out, either side must come together with its opposite in the Whole. There thought and sense alike find each its complement in the other. The principle that reality can wholly consist in one of these two sides of appearance, we therefore reject as a fundamental error.
Let us consider more closely the two delusions 37$ REALITY.
which have branched from this stem. The first of these, perceiving that the series of events is essential, concludes from this ground that mere sense, either outward or inward, is the one reality. Or, if it stops short of this, it still argues that to be real is to be, as such, perceptible. Because, that is, appearance in the temporal series is found necessary for reality * — a premise which is true — an unconscious passage is made, from this truth, to a vicious conclusion. 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 perception ever, as we have seen clearly, has a character contained within itself. In order to be fact at all, each presentation must exhibit ideality, or in other words transcendence of self; and that which appears at any one moment, is, as such, self-contradictory. And, from the other side, the less a character is able, as such, to appear — the less its necessary manifestation can be narrowed in time or in space — so much the more is it capable of both expansion and inner harmony. But these two features, as we saw, are the marks of reality.
And the second of the mistakes is like the first. Appearance, once more, is falsely identified with presentation, as such, to sense; and a wrong conclusion is, once more, drawn from this basis. But the error now proceeds in an opposite direction. Because the highest principles are, obviously and plainly, not perceptible by sense, they are taken to inhabit and to have their being in the world of pure thought. And this other region, with more or less consistency, is held to constitute the sole reality. But here, if excluded wholly from the serial flow of events, this world of thought is limited externally 1 Compare here Chapters xix. and xxiii.
and is internally discordant; while, if, further, we attempt to qualify the universe by our mere ideal abstract, and to attach this content to the Reality which appears in perception, the confusion becomes more obvious. Since the sense-appearance has been given up, as alien to truth, it has been in consequence set free, and is entirely insubordinate. And its concrete character now evidently determines, and infects from the outside, whatever mere thought we are endeavouring to predicate of the Real. But the union in all perception of thought with sense, the co-presence everywhere in all appearances of fact with ideality — this is the one foundation of truth.
And, when we add to this the saving distinction that to have existence need not mean to exist, and that to be realized in time is not always to be visible by any sense, we have made ourselves secure against 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.
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 presented basis that we construct our system of phenomena in space and time. We certainly perceived (Chapter xviii.) that any such constructed unity was but relative, imperfect, and partial. But, none the less, a building up of the sense-world from the ground of actual presentation is a condition of all our knowledge. It is not true that everything, even if temporal, has a place in our one " real " order of space or time. 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 pursuit of actual fact, is precisely the enlarging and making harmonious of its own ideal content. And the reason for this, as soon as we consider it, is obvious. The dollar, merely thought of or imagined, is comparatively abstract and void of properties. But the dollar, verified in space, has got its place 1 The series, in its proper character, is, of course, an ideal construction. But we may disregard that here.
in, and is determined by, an enormous construction of things. And to suppose that the concrete context of these relations in no sense qualifies its inner content, or that this qualification is a matter of indifference to thought, is quite indefensible.
A mere thought would mean an ideal content held apart from existence. But (as we have learnt) to hold a thought is always somehow, even against our will, to refer it to the Real. Hence our mere idea, now standing in relation with the Real, is related also to the phenomenal system of events in time. It is related to them, but without any connection with the internal order and arrangements of their system. But this means that our mere idea is determined by that system entirely from the outside. And it will therefore itself be permeated internally, and so destroyed, by the contingency forced into its content through these chaotic relations. Considered from this side, a thought, if it actually were bare, would stand at a level lower than the, so-called, chance facts of sense. For in the latter we have, at least, some internal connection with the context, and already a fixed relation of universals, however impure.
All reality must be revealed in the world of events; and that is most real which, within such an order or orders, finds least foreign to itself. Hence, if other things remain equal, a definite place in, and connection with, the temporal system gives increase of reality. For thus the relations to other elements, which must in any case determine, determine, at least to some extent, internally. And thus the imaginary, so far, must be poorer than the perceptible fact; or, in other words, it is compulsorily qualified by a wider area of alien and destructive relations. I have emphasized " if other things remain equal," for this restriction is important. There is imagination which is higher, and more true, and most emphatically more real, than any single fact of sense. And this brings us back to our old distinction. Every truth must appear, and must subordinate existence; but this appearance is not the same thing as to be present, properly and as such, within given limits of sense-perception. With the general principles of science we may perhaps See this at once. And again, with regard to the necessary appearances of art or religion, the same conclusion is evident. The eternal experience, in every case, fails to enter into the series of space or of time; or it enters that series improperly, and with a show which in various ways contradicts its essence. To be nearer the central heart of things is to dominate the extremities more widely; but it is not to appear there except incompletely and partially through a sign, an unsubstantial and a fugitive mode of expression. Nothing anywhere, not even the realized and solid moral "will, can either be quite real, as it exists in time, or can quite appear in its own essential character. But still the ultimate Reality, where all appearance as such is merged, is in the end the actual identity of idea and existence.
And, throughout our world, whatever is individual is more real and true; for it contains within its own limits a wider region of the Absolute, and it possesses more intensely the type of self-sufficiency. Or, to put it otherwise, the interval between such an element and the Absolute is smaller. We should require less alteration, less destruction of its own special nature, in order to make this higher element completely real.
We may now pass from this general principle to notice various points of interest, and, in the first place, to consider some difficulties handed on to this chapter. The problems of unperceived Nature, of dispositions in the soul, and the meaning in general of " potential " existence, require our attention. And I must begin by calling attention to an error.
We have seen that an idea is more true in proportion as it approaches Reality. And it approaches Reality in proportion as it grows internally more complete. And from this we possibly might conclude that thought, if completed as such, would itself be real; or that the ideal conditions, if fully there, would be the same as actual perfection. But such a conclusion would not hold; for we have found that mere thought could never, as such, be completed; and it therefore remains internally inconsistent and defective. And we have perceived, on the other side, that thought, completed, is forced to transcend itself. It has then to become one thing with sense and feeling. And, since these conditions of its perfection are partly alien to itself, we cannot say either that, by itself, it can arrive at completion, or that, when perfected, it, as such, any longer exists.
And, with this, we may advance to the consideration of several questions. We found (Chapter xxii.) that parts of the physical world might exist, and yet might exist, for us, only in the shape of thought. But we realized also that in the Absolute, where the contents of all finite selves are fused, these thoughtexistences must, in some way, be re-combined with sense. And the same conclusion held good also with psychical dispositions (Chapter xxiii.). These, in their proper character, have no being except in the world of thought For they, as we saw, are conditional; and the conditional, as such, has not actual existence. But once more here the ideas — how in detail we cannot say — must find their complement in the Whole. With the addition of this other side they will make part of the concrete Reality.
Our present chapter, perhaps, may have helped us to see more clearly on these points. For we have found that ideal conditions, to be complete and in this way to become real, must transcend themselves. They have to pass beyond the world of mere thought. And we have seen, in the second place, that every idea must possess a certain amount both of truth and reality. The ideal content must appear in the region of existence; and we have found that we have no right ever to regard it as unreal, because it is unable, as such, to show itself and to occupy a place there. We may now apply this principle both to the capacities of the soul, and to the unseen part of Nature. The former cannot properly exist, and the latter (so far as we saw) certainly need not do so. We may consider them each to be, as such, incapable of appearance. But this admission (we now have learnt) does not weaken, by itself, their claim to be real. And the amount of their reality, when our standard is applied, will depend on their importance, on the influence and bearing which each of them possesses in the universe.
Each of them will fall under the head of " potential existence," and we may pass on to consider the meaning of this phrase. The words " potential," and " latent," and " nascent," and we may add " virtual " and " tendency," are employed too often. They are used in order to imply that a certain thing exists; and this, although either we ought to know, or know, that the thing certainly does not exist. It would be hard to over-estimate the service rendered by these terms to some writers on philosophy. But that is not our business here. Potential existence means a set of conditions, one part of which is present at a certain point of space or time, while the other part remains ideal. It is used generally without any clear perception as to how much is wanted in order to make these conditions complete. And then the whole is spoken of, and is regarded, as existing at the point where actually but a portion of its factors are present. Such an abuse clearly is indefensible.
" Potential existence " is fairly applicable in the following sense. We may mean by it that something somehow appears already in a given point of time, although it does not as yet appear fully or in its own proper character. I will try to show later the positive conditions required for this use, but it is better to begin by pointing out where it is quite inadmissible. We ought not to speak of potential existence where, if the existence were made actual, the fact given now would be quite gone. That part of the conditions which appears at present, must produce causally the rest; and, in order for this to happen, foreign matter must be added. But, if so much is added that the individuality of this first appearance is wholly destroyed, or is even overwhelmed and swamped — "potential existence" is inapplicable. Thus the death of a man may result from the lodgment of a cherry-stone; but to speak of every cherry-stone as, therefore, the potential death of a man, and to talk of such a death as appearing already in any and every stone, would surely be extravagant. For so large an amount of foreign conditions must contribute to the result, that, in the end, the condition and the consequence are joined externally by chance. We may perhaps apprehend this more clearly by a grosser instance of misuse. A piece of bread, eaten by a poet, may be a condition required for the production of a lyrical poem.
But would any one place such a poem's existence already virtually in each piece of food, which may be considered likely by any chance to make its wTay into a poet?
These absurdities may serve to suggest the pro per employment of our term. It is applicabl wherever the factor present is considered capable o producing the rest; and it must effect this without the entire loss of its own existing character. The individuality, in other words, must throughout the process be continuous; and the end must very largely be due to the beginning. And these are two aspects of one principle. For clearly, if more than a certain amount of external conditions are brought in, the ideal identity of the beginning and of the end is destroyed. And, if so, obviously the result itself was not there at the first, and could in no rational sense have already appeared there. The ordinary example of the egg, which itself later becomes a fowl, is thus a legitimate application of potential existence. On the other hand to call every man, without distinction, a potential case of scarlet fever, would at least border on inaccuracy. While to assert that he now is already such products as can be produced only by his own disintegration, would be obviously absurd. Potential existence can, in brief, be used only where "development" or "evolution" retains its proper meaning. And by the meaning of evolution I do not understand that arbitrary misuse of the term, which has been advocated by a so-called " System of Philosophy."
Under certain conditions, then, the idea of potential being may be employed. But I must add at once that it can be employed nowhere with complete truth and accuracy. For, in order for anything to evolve itself, outer conditions must come in; and it is impossible in the end to assign a limit to the extent of this foreign matter. The genuine cause always must be the whole cause, and the whole cause never could be complete until it had taken in the universe.1 This is no mere speculative refinement, but a difficulty experienced in working; and we met it lately while enquiring into the body and soul (Chapter xxiii.). In strictness you can never assert that a thing will be, because of that which it is; but, where you cannot assert this, potential existence is partly inaccurate. It must be applied more or less vaguely, and more or less on sufferance. We are, in brief, placed between two dangers. If, with anything finite, you refuse wholly to pre-1 And this is impossible. See Chapters vi. and xviii.
dicate its relations — relations necessarily in part external, and in part, therefore, variable — then your account of this thing will fall short and be empty. But, otherwise, you will be affirming of the thing that which only it may be.
And, once driven to enter on this course, you are hurried away beyond all landmarks. You are forced indefinitely to go on expanding the subject of your predicates, until at last it has disappeared into something quite different. And hence, in employing potential existence, we are, so to speak, on an inclined plane. We start by saying, "A is such that, under probable conditions, its nature will develope into B; and therefore, because of this, I venture already to call it £." And we end by claiming that, because A may possibly be made to pass into another result C, C may, therefore, on this account, be predicated already. And we have to hold to this, although C, to but a very small extent, has been produced by A, and although, in the result, A itself may have totally vanished.
We must therefore admit that potential existence implies, to some extent, a compromise. Its use, in fact, cannot be defined upon a very strict principle. Still, by bearing in mind what the term endeavours to mean, and what it always must be taken more or less to involve, we may, in practice, succeed in employing it conveniently and safely. But it will remain, in the end, a wide-spread source of confusion and danger. The more a writer feels himself led naturally to have recourse to this phrase, the better cause he probably has for at least attempting to avoid it It may throw light on several problems, if we consider further the general nature of Possibility and Chance.1 We touched on this subject above, 1 On Possibility compare Chapter xxvii, and Principles of Logic, Book I., Chap. vii.
when we enquired if complete possibility is the same as reality (p. 383). Our answer to that question may be summed up thus: Possibility implies the separation of thought from existence; but, on the other hand, since these two extremes are essentially one, each, while divided from the other, is internally defective. Hence if the possible could be completed as such, it would have passed into the real. But, in reaching this goal, it would have ceased altogether to be mere thought, and it would in consequence, therefore, be no longer possibility.
The possible implies always the partial division of idea from reality. It is, properly, the consequence in thought from an ideal antecedent. It follows from a set of conditions, a system which is never complete in itself, and which is not taken to be real, as auch, except through part of its area. But this last qualification is necessary. The possible, itself, is not real; but its essence partly transcends ideas, and it has no meaning at all unless it is possible really. It must be developed from, and be relative to, a real basis. And, hence, there can be no such thing as unconditional possibility. The possible, in other words, is always relative. And, if it attempts to be free, it ceases to be itself.
We shall understand this, perhaps, better, if we recall the nature of relative chance (Chapter xix.). Chance is the given fact which falls outside of some ideal whole or system. And any element, not included within such a universal, is, in relation to that universal, bare fact, and so relative chance. Chance, in other words, would not be actual chance, if it were not also more. It is viewed in negative relation to some idea, but it could not exist in relation unless in itself it were ideal already. And with relative possibility, again, we find a counterpart implication. The possible itself would not be possible, if it were not more, and if it were not partially real. There must be an actual basis in