Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/248

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Yet neither as barely abstract thought nor as mere contents of experience is the Absolute yet definable as a positive Whole. On the contrary, although the ideas form a Group, there is nothing as yet about the nature of this Group, when abstractly viewed, which defines, so far, how often, or in what cases, it shall find realisation or fulfilment. On the other hand, the contents of experience, in so far as they are immediate data, simply serve to present the fulfilment of the system of ideas, and not to limit their fulfilment to a single case. In other words, one may so far declare, if one prefers, that there is one Idea which ipso facto does not belong to the original Group of ideas, as abstractly defined; namely, the very Idea of the wholeness of the system of experience in which that Group is to find its fulfilment. Once more, then, an antinomy has presented itself. The Absolute Experience, on the one hand, is that system in which the Group of ideas is realised, and, as absolute experience, forms one Whole. On the other hand, as mere fulfilment of ideas in contents, it is not yet a Whole at all, since other fulfilments so far appear as abstractly possible. The solution of the antinomy must lie in the incompleteness of our account as thus far rendered; namely, of the account in terms of mere thought and mere immediacy of contents. A new element must be added — not that, from the absolute point of view, the new element is an element that embodies an objective necessity, but that, from the absolute point of view, the whole world of facts actually has another aspect, a third aspect, in addition to the immediacy of the