Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/220

Rh has thought of the beyond, or has meant to mean — that is, to refer to — that very sort of object which he sceptically calls in question. If the sceptic retorts: “One may imagine that one is referring to the real beyond, but in fact one can only refer to contents immediately presented in consciousness,” then we reply that the very admission of the sceptic is fatal to his own thesis; for if one can imagine that one means what one does not really mean, the incongruity between an imagined meaning, present to consciousness, and one’s real meaning, which is not present to consciousness so long as the imaginary meaning takes its place, already implies the reality of meanings when they are not present to this single moment of consciousness; and this implication already involves the sceptic in the admission both that the beyond can be, and that it can be meant even while it is beyond. If the sceptic hereupon admits that one may really mean the beyond, but may not know whether in truth there is a beyond, this reference to what is in truth is itself an admission of a real beyond; namely, precisely that which is in truth.

The beyond, then, is logically implied in the presented, and so far the realist is right. As we have seen, the half-idealist of our earlier statement is equally right in insisting that whatever beyond you admit or define must be interpreted in terms of possible experience. Now the beyond that we are actually forced to define as the content of reality has appeared in the foregoing discussion (1) as that which, if presented in experience, would answer truly all rational questions. It has appeared (2) as that