Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/448

 may summarily be dismissed as an exploded absurdity. And that perfection should exist in the finite, as such, we have seen to be even directly contrary to the nature of things. A supposition that it may be made worth my while to be benevolent—especially when an indefinite prolongation of my life is imagined—cannot, in itself and for our knowledge, be called impossible. But then, upon the other hand, we have remarked that such an imagined improvement is not a solution of the actual main problem. The belief may possibly add much to our comfort by assuring us that virtue is the best, and is the only true, selfishness. But such a truth, if true, would not imply that both or either of our genuine ends is, as such, realized. And, failing this, the wider discrepancy has certainly not been removed from goodness. We may say, in a word, that the deus ex machina refuses to work. Little can be brought in by this venerable artifice except a fresh source of additional collision and perplexity. And, giving up this embarrassing agency, popular Ethics may prefer to make an appeal to “Reason.” For, if its two moral ends are each reasonable, then, if somehow they do not coincide, the nature of things must be unreasonable. But we have shown, on the other hand, that neither end by itself is reasonable; and, if the nature of things were to bring together elements discordant within themselves and conflicting with one another, and were to attempt, without transforming their character, to make these coincide,—the nature of things would have revealed itself as an apotheosis of unreason or of popular Ethics. And, baffled by its failure to find its dogmas realized in the universe, this way of thinking at last may threaten us with total scepticism. But here, once more, it is but speaking of that of which it knows really nothing; for an honest scepticism is a thing outside its comprehension. An honest and truth-seeking