Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/206

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It must be observed that what is here said about the interpretation of experience in general, must inevitably apply to the ethical experiences and ideas upon which Professor Howison lays so much stress. An ethical fact, qua fact, possesses no advantage in logic over any other fact. When I assert the real variety, the moral independence, or any other sort of relative separation of the individuals of the moral world, I assert a fact which, whatever be the reasons for its assertion, must, as fact, be viewed either as beyond anybody’s experience or else as present to some experience; say, to the Absolute Experience. The former hypothesis leads me once more through all the stages of the foregoing argument. The latter hypothesis alone solves the logical problem of the real facts in question. However diverse, or separate, the moral individuals may be, the reality of their very separation itself is a fact which must be present in and for the unity of the Absolute Experience. This their separation is only relative. When Professor Howison asserts that, for any moral individual, his fellow, namely, any other moral individual, is a beyond, and as such inaccessible, he asserts precisely what an ordinary realist asserts concerning the nature of every fact not presented in concrete human experience. As against a half-idealist, who should attempt to reduce the contents of his neighbour’s inner life to mere possibilities of his own personal and private experience, Professor Howison is unquestionably right. But as against an Absolute Idealism, which admits that fact transcends the bare assertion of any real possibility of experience, but which recognises,