Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/213

194 any degree. It is real in its own way, if the Absolute is real. And unless the imperfect has Reality, the Absolute has none. We must then abandon the mystic’s mere series of gradually vanishing terms for some view that unites these terms into a more connected whole. What is, is not then merely immediate, is not merely the limit of the finite series, is not merely the zero of consciousness. The result therefore is that Immediacy is but one aspect of Being. We must afresh begin our effort to define the ontological predicate, by taking account both of finite ideas, and of the sense in which they can be true.

Our result, in case of the mystic, is accordingly very simple. To the realist we formerly said: Your ideas are Independent Beings as surely as their objects are such. Hence your world is rent in twain, and you cannot put it together again. To the mystic we now say: Your Absolute is defined merely as the goal of the finite search. That it is such a goal, this alone, according to your own hypothesis, distinguishes it from mere nothing, for to save the unity of Being, you have deprived it of all other characters than this. Therefore, since your Absolute is only a goal, an attainment, and is naught else, its sole meaning is due to your process of search, in other words to your restless ideas that seek it. Annihilation is something to me only so long as I seek annihilation. Death is a positive ideal only so long as I strive for death. Pure immediacy has a content only so long as it fulfils ideas. In brief, by contrast with and by other relation to finite facts, your zero has its meaning. If, then, your conscious ideas