Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/547

 and thought of the centres themselves. And what the question comes to is, rather, this, Can there be matter of experience, in any form, which does not enter as an element into some finite centre?

In view of our ignorance this question may seem unanswerable. We do not know why or how the Absolute divides itself into centres, or the way in which, so divided, it still remains one. The relation of the many experiences to the single experience, and so to one another, is, in the end, beyond us. And, if so, why should there not be elements experienced in the total, and yet not experienced within any subordinate focus? We may indeed, from the other side, confront this ignorance and this question with a doubt. Has such an unattached element, or margin of elements, any meaning at all? Have we any right to entertain such an idea as rational? Does not our ignorance in fact forbid us to assume the possibility of any matter experienced apart from a finite whole of feeling? But, after consideration, I do not find that this doubt should prevail. Certainly it is only by an abstraction that I can form the idea of such unattached elements, and this abstraction, it may seem, is not legitimate. And, if the elements were taken as quite loose, if they were not still inseparable factors in a whole of experience, then the abstraction clearly would lead to an inconsistent idea. And such an idea, we have agreed, must not be regarded as possible. But, in the present case, the elements, unattached to any finite centre, are still subordinate to and integral aspects of the Whole. And, since this Whole is one experience, the position is altered. The abstraction from a finite centre does not lead visibly to self-contradiction. And hence I cannot refuse to regard its result as possible.

But this possibility, on the other side, seems to have no importance. If we take it to be fact, we