“The consummation,” says Hegel, in a familiar and often-quoted passage, “of the Infinite aim (_i.e._ of the purpose of God as omniscient and almighty) consists merely in removing the illusion which makes it seem unaccomplished.”[158] Now although there is a sense in which this great saying must for ever be maintained to contain an element of profound truth,[159] the attitude of Pragmatism in regard to it would be, firstly, that of a rooted objection to its outspoken intellectualism. How can the chief work of the Almighty be conceived to be merely that of getting rid somehow from our minds, or from his, of _our_ mental confusions? And then, secondly, an equally rooted objection is taken to the implication that the individual human being should allow himself to entertain, as possibly true, a view of the general trend of things that renders any notion of his playing an appreciable part therein a theoretical and a practical absurdity.[160] This notion (or “conceit,” if you will) he can surrender only by ceasing to think of his own consciousness of “effort” and of the part played by “effort”[161] and “invention” in the entire animal and human world, and also of his consciousness of duty and of the ideal in general. This latter consciousness of itself bids him to realize certain “norms” or regulative prescripts simply because they are consonant with that higher will which is to him the very truth of his own nature. He cannot, in other words, believe that he is consciously obliged to work and to realize his higher nature for nothing. The accomplishment of ends and of the right must, in other words, be rationally believed by him to be part of the nature of things. It is this conviction, we feel sure, that animates Pragmatism in the opposition it shares both with common sense and with the radical thought of our time against the meaninglessness to Hegelianism, or to Absolutism,[162] many of the hopes and many of the convictions that we feel to be so necessary and so real in the life of mankind generally.