Page:The Conception of God (1897).djvu/335



After the foregoing general analysis of the function of self-consciousness, nothing, at first sight, could seem more incongruous than to speak of our Absolute, in its wholeness, as possessing, in any essential sense, an absolute self-consciousness. For the category of Self-Consciousness appears in our account as primarily one of limitation, of contrast, of relative separation between Self and Other. But the Absolute Experience and Will form, as we have asserted, one Unity of consciousness, one moment or instant of fulfilled life, over against which there is no external Other wherewith this whole could be contrasted. If I know myself by contrast with my neighbour or with my distant ideal, how can the Absolute, who has no neighbours, and no unfulfilled ideals, know such a contrast between himself and somebody else? In this sense, one would say, the Absolute must simply transcend self-consciousness. This is one of the well-known theses of Mr. Bradley.

In answer, one must point out that our Absolute, as inclusive Will and Experience, must at all events include the whole of the content which any finite self-consciousness involves, and must, at least in so far, possess self-conscious elements or factors in order even to transcend them. What I am conscious of when I am aware of myself, that at the least is a moment in the whole consciousness of the Absolute; and so much is involved in our general theory of the positive inclusion of all finite facts in the unity of the supreme consciousness of the Absolute.

But one cannot pause here. The unity of the Absolute Moment is, as we have seen, a fact not merely