Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/23

 CONTRADICTION AND EEALITY. 9 and evil are, on the view here accepted, essential features of Eeality, and belong to an aspect of it which does not disappear even in perfection. The view that they are illusions says that if we knew everything we should see that there was no pain or evil at all. In a certain sense the two views may be brought near together, but my plea is that all depends on being in earnest with the idea of negativity, and that from that point of view the idea of illusion is rejected, though that of appearance, as something actual but contradictory, is accepted. Hegel mentions the name of illusion in the matter ; but, as I understand, the illusion which he speaks of is not the belief that finiteness is actual, but the inference that this being so, there is nothing more to be said, or in other words, that the actual is necessarily ultimate. At all events, as against the idea that finiteness, pain and evil are an illusion, the view here indicated would maintain that conscious beings actually suffer and do wrong because it is their nature to complete themselves ; and the general form of this completion involves as one factor in it the loss of self, and in the finite world this is emphasised by various degrees of what we have called Logical Contradiction, that is to say, inadequacy of the elements in which completion is sought. It would follow, and this seems to agree with the best ethical theory, that the ultimate logical structure, if I may so speak, of suffering and of evil is the same as that of satisfaction and of good. This is noticeable of course in Green's theory of morality. The difference between them is one of the adequacy of contents to self-completion, and their kinship is seldom altogether latent even in finite experience. I may refer to Mr. Haldane's observation on the death of animals in the second series of Gifford Lectures, and to the nature of the fullest aesthetic exaltation. @. The same mode of thought would be hostile to any conception of the divine nature which should involve stability and perfection in such a sense as to exclude activity and the general form of self-sacrifice. It is not intended to adhere to the view of those who conceive the divine being as finite and possibly as one of a number. The intention is rather the reverse, namely, to maintain that finiteness ipso facto arises, if negativity is not given its full significance in the conception of the supreme nature. The Master of Balliol's criticism of Aristotle's Theoretic life as literally interpreted puts this point very clearly. It is not an imperfection in the Supreme Being but an essential of his completeness, that his nature, summing up that of all Keality, should go out into its other to seek the completion which in this case alone is