Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/556

 542 CRITICAL NOTICES : perfect while others are not," and that there can be no unity in the Universe " if each is not helped by the perfection, and hindered by the imperfection, of every other," I should reply that Dr. McTag- gart is simply transferring an argument based on the relations of human beings to one another to the relations between human spirits and a Spirit who must (if the theistic view is accepted at all) be in some respects very unlike any other Spirit. I should be far indeed from arguing that God has no need of the other Spirits whose being depends upon his : but I do not think that the fact of his having such a need is inconsistent with the idea that he is "perfectly " good, though I am not very fond of the word " per- fect ". When Dr. McTaggart goes on to argue that to say that God can be " completely good without being completely happy " is open to the objection that it is "a false abstraction to maintain that any cause can work an effect on one aspect of a person's life and leave the others untouched " (p. 254), it seems to me he is involving himself in a view of the Universe which would compel him to say that if there were one sheep less in the world than there is, it would necessarily follow that two and two could not make four at least in the same sense and to the same extent that they actually do. This has been gravely maintained, but not, I believe, by Dr. McTaggart. In our experience very great but limited goodness is compatible with less than perfect happiness : I see no reason why God should not be imperfectly happy in so far as the evil of the world is not yet removed, or, in the knowledge that it will ultimately be so, be happy or at least be in a state in which the sharp antagonism between goodness and happiness which exists in us should be transcended. Such is the general line of the reply which I should make to Dr. McTaggart's objections. But it is obvious that the case for Theism could not be fully stated with- out carrying the war into the enemy's camp and asking which system is most in harmony with the whole of our knowledge. To my mind the greatest difficulty of Dr. McTaggart's view is that it does not satisfy the intellectual demands which Idealism is intended to satisfy. Dr. McTaggart quotes the following words of mine : "Mr. McTaggart (whatever we may say of the "Pluralists ") feels that the world must be a Unity, that it consists not merely of souls but of related and inter-connected souls which form a system. But a system for whom ? The idea of a system which is not ' for ' any mind at all is not open to an Idealist ; and the idea of a world each part of which is known to some mind but is not known as a whole to any mind is almost equally difficult. Where then, in his view, is the Mind that knows the whole? i.e., the whole system of souls with the content of each " (p. 250). This is his reply : " If there is no omniscient person there is doubtless a possibility that some things may exist which are not known to anybody or, at least, not fully known to anybody. And in that case there can be nobody who knows everything no one, that is, who knows the