Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 2.djvu/515

 elements of the Absolute Idea which transcends and unites them.

This solution can, however, scarcely be accepted, for the reasons given above. How can we account for the delusion that the world is partially irrational, if, as a matter of fact, it is completely rational? How, in particular, can we regard such a delusion as compatible with our own complete rationality?

To this it may be possibly objected that our argument is based on a confusion. That a thought is a delusion need not imply that it, or the being who thinks it, is irrational. Everything which, like a thought, is used as a symbol, can be viewed in two aspects — firstly as a fact, and secondly as representing, as a symbol, some other fact. In the first aspect we say that it is real or unreal; in the second that it is true or false. These two pairs of predicates have no intrinsic connexion. A false judgment is just as really a fact as a true one.

Now the conclusion from the Hegelian dialectic was that whatever was real was rational. We are, therefore, compelled to assert that every thought, and every thinking being, are completely rational — can be explained in a way which gives entire rest and satisfaction to reason. But, it may be said, this is not -in the least interfered with by the fact that many real thoughts are defective symbols of the other reality which they profess to represent. The false can be real — indeed, must be — for a thought cannot misrepresent reality unless it is itself real. Till it is real it can do nothing. And if it can be real, why can it not be rational? Indeed we often, in every-day life, and in science, do find the false to be more or less rational. It is as possible to account, psychologically, for the course of thought which brings out an erroneous conclusion as for the course of thought which brings out a correct one. We can explain our failures to arrive at the truth as well as our successes. It would seem then that there is nothing to prevent ourselves and our thoughts being part of a completely rational universe, although our thoughts are in some respects incorrect symbols.

But it must be remembered that the rationality which Hegel requires of the universe is much more than complete determination under the category of cause and effect — a category which the dialectic maintains to be quite insufficient, unless transcended by a higher one. He requires, among other things, the validity of the idea of final cause. And if this is brought in, it is difficult to see how delusions can