Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/190

 176 J. ELLIS MCTAGGART : in the first place, be quite invalid. For they would be at- tempts to get more in the conclusion than there was in the premisses to proceed from the simple unity to a unity which was also differentiated. And any attempt to get more out of the premisses than there is in them, is necessarily invalid. And, moreover, such an attempt would be quite contrary to Hegel's principles. His position is essentially that reality is a differentiated unity, and that either the differentiation or the unity by itself is a mere abstraction. And it would be contrary to all the lessons of the dialectic if we supposed that one moment of a concrete whole could be either caused or explained by the other moment. It is the whole which must be alike the ground and the explanation of the moments. What we have to maintain here is not that the characters of the individuals are dependent on their connexions, but, on the contrary, that the characters and the connexions are completely united. The character of the individual is ex- pressed completely in its connexions with others, and exists nowhere else. On the other hand the connexions are to be found in the nature of the individuals they connect, and nowhere else, and not merely in the common nature which the individuals share, but in that special and unique nature which distinguishes one individual from another. This completes our definition of the Absolute Idea. Not only has the nature of each individual to be found in its recognition of its similarity with all the rest, but the nature which is to be found in this recognition must be something unique and distinguishing for each individual. The whole difference of each individual from the others has to be con- tained in the perception of its harmony with the others. We need not be alarmed at the apparently paradoxical appearance of this definition. For all through the doctrine of the Notion, and especially in the Idea, our categories have been paradoxical to the ordinary understanding. Even if we could find nothing in experience which explicitly em- bodied this category, we should not have any right, on that ground, to doubt its validity. If the arguments which have conducted us to it are valid, we shall be compelled to believe that this, and this only, is the true nature of absolute reality. The only effect of the want of an example would be our inability to form a mental picture of what absolute reality would be like. I believe, however, that we can find an example of this category in experience. It seems to me that emotion, con-