[12] The same result is hinted at by Mr. Taylor. Taylor, “Elements of Metaphysics,” p. 22. [13] Linear order, 1, 2, 3, &c. Circular. A CD B, A CD B.… The latter, it is true, involves the idea of separation. But this idea can be developed from those of inclusion and exclusion, which belong to the fundamental laws of thought. [14] The Absolute, according to a recent metaphysical thinker, is “a conscious life which embraces the totality of existence, all at once, and in a perfect systematic unity, as the content of its experience.”--Taylor, “Elements of Metaphysics,” p. 60. II PRAGMATISM AND A THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE The question before us is the relation of Pragmatism to a body of knowledge. (_a_) One question at issue between the Idealist[15] and the Pragmatist has to do with the way in which each defines knowledge and gauges its ultimate aim. Both say that knowledge is relative, but one school asserts that the human mind slowly and laboriously uncovers or discovers what Goethe calls the “Living garment of Deity,” _i.e._ the world of nature, and comes into a heritage of scientific truth which increasingly corresponds to the subject of his faith; the other claims that we live in a self-evolving universe in which in the course of long ages a new heaven and a new earth may be created which are not foreseen or implied in present conditions. In other words, the Idealist finds the Divine in human life; he finds in his own small corner of the universe the microcosm and symbol of Infinity: the Pragmatist considers that nothing _is_ which is not a result of human action, and lowers the Divine element to the result of individual human activity. A compromise between the two ideas on new and interesting lines has recently been made by Bergson. The Christian doctrine of Immanence and Transcendence also combines them. Now the increase of a body of knowledge would seem to depend on the comparison of the successful working out of hypotheses with the discrepancies from theory that from time to time appear. Taken together, proofs and discrepancies point to the evidence of a larger law. This is Hegel’s logic, and the principle, so far as it is here implied, is not denied in modern times, for no one wishes to found a logic on a study of discrepancies as such. Even W. James says, “Whenever you once place yourself at the point of view of any higher synthesis you see exactly how it does, in a fashion, take up opposites into itself.”[16] In fact, without the notion of unity, that of discrepancy could not exist: there must be a background on which the differences appear. The ultimate unity is symbolised in the Idealist doctrine of an Absolute.