Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/58

 44 J. ELLIS MCTAGGART : alternatives follows. Either the Object has this inner nature, or it has not. If it has it, it has it, and the inner nature is not crushed, but, on the contrary, exists in its fulness. But if it has it not, then this xyz is not the Object's inner nature at all, and the Object is not in the least crushed or thwarted because it is not xyz. Why should it be xyz, if in point of fact it is not ? (Of course all this would not apply if we were speaking of self-conscious individuals Objects who were in the fullest sense for self. In the case of any being with a power of conscious self-determination, the inner nature will include an ideal of some sort, and if outside circumstances prevent that ideal from being realised, then we can intelligibly speak of the inner nature, being thwarted. For the inner nature in such a case is not merely a fact, but it is a fact which is a demand, and a demand can be real and yet unsatisfied. But we are not here dealing with self-conscious beings, and therefore the argument of the last paragraph will hold.) H6w then can we get out of the contradiction in which this category involves us ? We can be delivered from it by a line of argument which I have already more or less antici- pated when criticising Formal Mechanism. There can, in fact, be no opposition between inner nature and outer relations, because there is no difference between them. All we mean by the inner nature of the Object is the general laws which determine the manner in which it does enter into relations. The inner nature of glass, for example, is just that it can scratch wax and cannot be scratched by it, that it cannot scratch diamonds, while diamonds can scratch it, and so on. If we try to think of any inner nature of the Object which is not expressed in the various actions and reactions, actual or possible, which the Object enters into, we absolutely fail. And, while there is thus no inner nature which is not also outside relations, it is equally true that there are no outside relations which are not an expression of inner nature. This is often thrown into the background by the practical utility of considering one of the two terms in a relation as purely passive. But this is only a convenient inaccuracy. Every- thing which, as we say, "happens to" an Object, is really a manifestation of its inner nature. A tabula rasa is the stock example of something passive, and the active co-operation of the wax in the work of writing is not obvious on the surface. But when we consider how very different the result would have been if an attempt had been made to write on water, or on diamonds, it becomes evident that the