The solution here suggested is probably more likely to meet with
opposition from the side of Idealism than of Pragmatism. It involves,
it will be said, the reality of time, the dependence of the Infinite
in the finite, and therewith a departure from the whole line of
Hegelian thought. (1) It does surely involve the reality of time in
the sense that it involves the reality of existence, which it is
agreed is process. Without process the eternal is not complete or, if
eternity means completeness, is not truly eternal. Our mistake lies in
abstraction of the one from the other, which, as always, ends in
confusion of the one with the other. Truth lies in giving each its
place. Not only does eternity assert the conception of the hour but
the hour asserts the conception of eternity--with what adequacy is
another question. (2) The second of the above objections takes its
point from the contradiction to religious consciousness which seems to
be involved. This is certainly a mistake. Religious consciousness
asserts, no doubt, that God is necessary to the soul: from Him as its
inspiration, to Him as its ideal are all things. But it asserts with
equal emphasis that the soul is necessary to God. To declare itself an
unnecessary creation is surely on the part of the individual soul the
height of impiety. God lives in the soul as it in Him. He also might
say, from it as His offspring, to it as the object of His outgoing
love are all things. (3) It is a mistake to attribute to Hegel the
doctrine that time is an illusion. If in a well-known passage (_Logic_
§ 212) he seems to countenance the Spinoxistic view he immediately
corrects it by assigning an "actualizing force" to this illusion and
making it a "necessary dynamic element of truth." Consistently with
this we have the conclusion stated in the succeeding section on the
Will. "Good, the final end of the world, has being only while it
constantly produces itself. And the world of the spirit and the world
of nature continue to have this distinction, that the latter moves
only in a recurring cycle while the former certainly also makes
progress." The mistake is not Hegel's but ours. It is to be remedied
not by giving up the idea of the Infinite but by ceasing to think of
the Infinite as of a being endowed with a static perfection which the
finite will merely reproduces, and definitely recognizing the forward
effort of the finite as an essential element in Its self-expression.
If there be any truth in this suggestion it seems likely that the last
word of idealism, like the first, will prove to be that the type of
the highest reality is to be sought for not in any fixed Parmenidean
circle of achieved being but in an ideal of good which while never
fully expressed under the form of time can never become actual and so
fulfil itself under any other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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