Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 2.djvu/503

 fully rational a universe in which a process in time is a fundamental reality? The theory before us maintains that the universe starts with a minimum of reality, corresponding only to the category of Pure Being. From this point it develops by the force of the dialectic. Gradually each of the higher categories becomes real, and this gradual evolution of logical completeness makes the process which constitutes the life of the universe. All the facts around us are to be attributed to the gradually developing idea, and when the development is complete, and reality has become an incarnation of the Absolute Idea, then the process will end in perfection. The spirituality of the universe, up till then implicit and partial, will have become complete and explicit. The real will be completely rational, and the rational will be completely real.

On this we must remark, in the first place, that the process in time by which the dialectic develops itself must be regarded as finite, and not as infinite. Neither in experience nor in a priori criticism can we find any reason to believe that infinite time really exists, or is anything more than an illegitimate inference from the infinite extensibility of time. Nor, if it did exist, could it form part of an ultimate rational explanation of the universe. An unending regress, whether true or not, is certainly not a solution which meets the demands of reason. More especially is it impossible that it should be accepted as part of an Hegelian theory. For infinite time would be the strongest possible example of the “false infinite” of endless aggregation, which Hegel invariably condemns as a mere mockery of explanation.

And, independently of this, it is clear that an infinite series in time would not be an embodiment of the dialectic. For the dialectic is most emphatically a process with a beginning and an end, and any series which embodies it must have a beginning and an end also. If the dialectic has any truth at all, there can be no steps before Pure Being, nor any steps after the Absolute Idea. The process must commence at a fixed point, and cannot therefore occupy infinite time.

We may take it then that the theory which imagines the dialectic to develop itself gradually regards it as doing so in a limited time. What follows from this hypothesis?

The first difficulty which arises is that every event in time requires a previous event as its cause. How then shall we be able to explain the first event of the complete series. The first term, like all the others, is an event in time, that is, it had a beginning, before which it did not exist. What determined the change which brought it into existence?