§ 189. Absolute idealism is thus reached after a long and devious course of development. But the argument may be stated much more briefly. Plato, it will be remembered, found that experience tends ever to transcend itself. The thinker finds himself compelled to pursue the ideal of immutable and universal truth, and must identify the ultimate being with that ideal. Similarly Hegel says: "That upward spring of the mind signifies that the being which the world has is only a semblance, no real being, no absolute truth; it signifies that beyond and above that appearance, truth abides in God, so that true being is another name for God."[382:10] The further argument of absolute idealism differs from that of Plato in that the dependence of truth upon the mind is accepted as a first principle. The ideal with which experience is informed is now _the state of perfect knowledge_, rather than the system of absolute truth. The content of the state of perfect knowledge will indeed be the system of absolute truth, but none the less _content_, precisely as finite knowledge is the content of a finite mind. In pursuing the truth, I who pursue, aim to realize in myself a certain highest state of knowledge. Were I to know all truth I should indeed have ceased to be the finite individual who began the quest, but the evolution would be continuous and the character of self-consciousness would never have been lost. I may say, in short, that God or being, is my perfect cognitive self. The argument for absolute idealism is a constructive interpretation of the subjectivistic contention that knowledge can never escape the circle of its own activity and states. To meet the demand for a final and standard truth, a demand which realism meets with its doctrine of a being independent of any mind, this philosophy defines a _standard mind_. The impossibility of defining objects in terms of relativity to a finite self, conducts dialectically to the conception of the _absolute self_. The sequel to my error or exclusiveness, is truth or inclusiveness. The outcome of the dialectic is determined by the symmetry of the antithesis. Thus, corrected experience implies a last correcting experience; partial cognition, complete cognition; empirical subject, transcendental subject; finite mind, an absolute mind. The following statement is taken from a contemporary exponent of the philosophy: