Page:Knowing and acting.djvu/26

 Nevertheless our last word is not simply that they are different: we know not only that they come together, but how they do so. They are 'as far apart as the poles', and yet again the poles are held fast together within the sphere of human nature or experience, and by their diametrical opposition measure its dimension. Or, as we may put it, human nature or life and every item of it polarizes itself, like the divided fragments of a magnet, into just these opposites: every moment of experience unites them both, and requires within it their diametrical contrast.

The unity, or rather the system, of spiritual being is no fortuitous aggregate of parts anyhow different: by its very nature it permits and requires precisely this polar opposition of knowing and acting, and each fragment of its life and being presents the self-same structure. If we think of this unity as maintaining itself in and through succession, then the cyclical alternation of knowing and acting is the fundamental law of its rhythm—the Leitmotiv of the music of the Universe, or at least, of our life. Each and every action presupposes knowledge of a situation: each different action knowledge of a different situation: in and from ignorance no action can arise. And, on the other hand, knowing presupposes acting: in order to know there must first be something to know, and for this to be it must have been enacted. If in the universe the wellsprings of action ran dry there would be no 'object' of knowledge, and all knowing—which is essentially afterthought—would vanish with the surcease of its object.

This thesis I maintain to be true, true precisely, universally, and without reservation. But if true, is it not a truism, empty, tautologous, uninstructive? I venture to think it is not so.

For, in the first place, it makes an end of the claims of