Page:Idealism and the Theory of Knowledge.djvu/12

8 denied whenever they are made absolute. Thus those who carry any difference to the point of dualism do away with that very difference by over-emphasizing it, just as surely as those who disregard or abstract from difference in the interest of unity. The parts of the intelligible world mean nothing except in the whole, and the whole means nothing except as distributing itself to the parts, and constituting their spiritual bond.

If there is any truth in these views, the only reasonable controversy between philosophers must be, on the one hand, as to the nature of the all-embracing unity on which every intelligible experience must rest, and, on the other hand, as to the nature of the differences which it equally involves. To ask whether there is any such real unity, or whether it embraces real differences, is to attempt to leap off one’s own shadow: it is to try to think, while attacking the only basis on which we can think. We cannot play the game of thought, if one might use such an expression, without taking our stand upon the idea that the world is a self-consistent and intelligible whole: though of course, this does not mean that any actual attempt to systematize our knowledge can be more than a step towards the attainment of the ideal of a perfect analysis and re-synthesis of the manifold content of experience. The problem of knowledge is to find out how the real unity of the world manifests itself through all its equally real differences, and we can show that any abstract view, such as those of Berkeley or Spencer, which would deprive us of any element in it, would make the progressive solution of it by science and philosophy impossible. But we cannot prove these presuppositions of all knowledge directly, or by making the system based upon them complete, if for no other reason, because with our increasing experience the problem itself is always enlarging. In this sense, the work of science, and still more the work of philosophy, must always be a work of faith, meaning by faith, not believing anything merely upon authority, but proceeding upon a principle the complete vindication or realization of which is for us impossible; for, obviously, nothing short of omniscience could grasp the world as a complete system. It is involved in the very idea of a developing consciousness such as ours, that while, as an intelligence, it presupposes the idea of the whole, and, both in thought and action, must continually strive to realize that idea, yet what it deals with is necessarily a partial and limited experience, and its actual attainments can never, either in