Page:Philosophical Review Volume 15.djvu/172

154 to life is its eternal newness. Each fresh experience is a genuine evolution of some new reality. Each moment is unique. Nothing just like it has ever occurred in the universe before. This is how we wish to think of our own experience. Why should we withhold this character from the infinite and the eternal, from the universal absolute experience? Why should what to us is the sign of emptiness and the quiet of the grave be supposed to be the highest tribute we can pay to the Supreme Being? Are we not much nearer the truth when with Lessing we prefer the 'search for the truth' to the 'truth' itself, when we think of the Absolute rather in terms of a dynamic becoming than as static being? To be sure, it is not much of a search if it is a perpetual seeking and never finding; if it is an eternal becoming without becoming something positive and definite. But to find it once for all, to become it and all there is of it at last completely,—what a hell that would make of heaven!

We are not maintaining, however, that the Absolute is simply change, that there is no truth whatever in absolutism. On the contrary, we distinctly believe in the Absolute, in a concrete or functional absolute. The Absolute, we hold, must be in, not beyond our experience. We are not arguing that the Absolute is imperfect. We are simply arguing against a static idea of perfection. Perfection means, not final consummation, but inexhaustible capacity for development. The Absolute is perfect in the sense of embodying infinite potentialities, potencies, promises for the future. "Be ye perfect" does not mean "be absolute" in the sense of completed or finished up, says Professor Dewey. It means: Be adequate in your present functioning; be all that your present opportunities permit you to be, so that you can be the most and best possible in future stages of your career. It means: Be perfect in the sense of so living now that you will be able to get the most out of the future which is dependent upon it. If I look for a tool in practical life, I want it relatively complete, perfect as relevant to a definite end. But I do not want my experience stopped, finished up at that point. I want it to be complete in the sense of adequate, but to secure just this I must have a constant stream of fresh experiences. Perfection