Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/253

 subject holds all in one, while predication involves severance, and so inflicts on its subject a partial loss of unity. And hence neither ultimate Reality, nor any “this,” can consist of qualities. That is one side of the truth, but the truth also has another side. Reality owns no feature or aspect which cannot in its turn be distinguished, none which cannot in this way become a mere adjective and predicate. The same conclusion holds of the “this,” in whatever sense you take it. There is nothing there which could form an intractable crudity, nothing which can refuse to qualify and to be merged in the ultimate Reality.

We have found that, in a sense, the “this” is not, and does not own, content. But, in another sense, we have seen that it contains, and is, nothing else. We may now pass to the examination of a second prejudice. Is there any content which is owned by and sticks in the “this,” and which thus remains outstanding, and declines union with a higher system? We have perceived, on the contrary, that by its essence the “this” is self-transcendent. But it may repay us once more to dwell and to enlarge on this topic. And I shall not hesitate in part to repeat results which we have gained already.

If we are asked what content is appropriated by the “this,” we may reply that there is none. There is no inalienable content which belongs to the “this” or the “mine.” My immediate feeling, when I say “this,” has a complex character, and it presents a confused detail which, we have seen, is content. But it has no “what” which belongs to it as a separate possession. It has no feature identified with its own private exclusivity. That is first a negative relation which, in principle, must qualify the internal from outside. And in practice we find that each element contained can refer itself elsewhere. Each tends naturally towards a wider whole outside of the