Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/250

Rh of this fulfilment, and Will, whereby not merely this adequacy is secured in general, but also the adequacy is concretely secured in one whole and single content of the total experience.” One might again illustrate our conception by supposing any one of us to ask himself: “What would be my state were my conscious aims to be completely fulfilled, and, above all, were my knowledge to become absolute?” The natural answer would be: “In that case, (1) my thoughts would form one whole system, with no uncomprehended ideas beyond the system. The contents or data of my experience would then (2) fulfil these ideas, so that there would be no object that I thought of without possessing it as present, — for instance, no wish ungratified, no ideal unfulfilled. But hereupon a difficulty would arise. For I should still be able, however many objects of experience exemplified my ideas, to think always of other logically possible fulfilments of any or of all once defined ideas. For such abstract limitlessness is of the essential, the logically necessary, nature of bare thought as such. However much experience gave me, I could think of more, since that would be the very nature of my thinking process. How, then, would the supposed Wholeness of experience be logically possible? To this difficulty I should rightly answer, that an incompleteness for which, not the poverty of my experience, but the abstract endlessness of my demand as thinker was responsible, could readily be supposed to cease if I added one element more to my experience, or at all events to the type of consciousness which I now possessed. This new element would be added when-