14 XX DR. MCTAGGART'S ABSOLUTE 391 Equally incomprehensible from the finite standpoint must it be, how the measure of individual independence and initiative which we enjoy is compatible with the creative function or the all-pervasive activity of the divine.1 But in whatever sense or in whatever way our thoughts and actions form part of the divine experience, we know that it is a sense which does not prevent them from being ours. We were agreed that no speculative difficulties could override this primary certainty. Dr. McTaggart presents his theory as a form of Idealism, and he also would repudiate the label of Pluralism, inasmuch as he believes the universe to be a systematic whole. But as compared with the views of Professor Howison and Dr. Rashdall which we have been considering, Dr. McTaggart's theory is more consistently and uncompromisingly pluralistic, in so far as it dispenses altogether with the centrality of reference which is signified by the conception of God. The unity of his Absolute is that of a society. His favourite analogy is a College', although he has the grace to admit that of course the Absolute is a far more perfect unity than a College'. As a unity of persons, though not itself a person, a College is a spiritual unity'; but, as he candidly and somewhat disconcertingly reminds us, 'every gooseclub, every gang of thieves' has a similar right to the term.3 Dr. McTaggart's theory of the Absolute is in reality an immediate consequence of his view of the self as a substance existing in its own right'. This does not mean ', he says, 'that any self could exist independently and in isolation from all others. Each self can only exist in virtue of its connexion with all the others and with the Absolute which is their unity. But this is a relation, not of 1 As I have already argued in Lecture XV. Cf. supra, pp. 285-93. As Mr. Marett wittily put it, 'It is Trinity basking in a perpetual Long Vacation'. 3 Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, p. 86. 4 Ibid., p. 37. subordination, but of reciprocal dependence.' The Absolute is exhaustively expressed in a certain number of such 'fundamental differentiations', and is thus a system of individuals of which each is conscious of the other '; and such a system, he contends, cannot be accused of atomism', for it is bound together by the mutual knowledge of its parts'. 1 The Idealism which Dr. McTaggart professes is deined by himself, almost in Berkeley's words, as the doctrine ' that nothing can exist but persons-conscious beings who know, will, and feel'.2 The position is open, therefore, to the general objections which have been brought against Monadism and Mentalism. But special difficulties are created for Dr. McTaggart's variety of the theory by the absence of any central Monad or Monas Monadum; for there appears to be no self in this harmonious system of selves '3 which knows all the other selves. How then do we know that they form a harmonious system? Can we, indeed, reasonably speak of system or harmony at all except in view of some mind for which it exists? And again, the ordinary way in which subjective idealism meets the scientific difficulties as to the existence of things unperceived or completely unknown by any finite spirit—namely, by attributing to them an existence for an eternal and omniscient Spirit—is not open to Dr. McTaggart, whose universe accordingly dissolves into a number of fragmentary subjective worlds with no provision for their co-ordination and no guarantee that, if pieced together, the result would be a coherent whole. Dr. McTaggart admits that, if his theory is to work, it would seem to follow that every self must be in complete and conscious harmony with the whole of 1 Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, p. 62. • Some Dogmas of Religion, p. 251. 3 Ibid., P. 248. Dr. Rashdall has urged these difficulties. Cf. Philosophy and Religion, pp. 123-6, and Mind, N. S., vol. xv, pp. 542–6. XX ETERNAL AND PERFECT SELVES 393 the universe',1 and he admits likewise that this is not in accordance with the facts as known to us. But he is equal to the emergency, for the difficulty disappears if we assume that all selves are perfect; and that, he says, would seem to be our proper conclusion '.2 If an opponent should remind me of the notorious imperfections in the present lives of each of us, I should point out that every self is . . . in reality eternal, and that its true qualities are only seen in so far as it is considered as eternal. Sub specie aeternitatis, every self is perfect. Sub specie temporis, it is progressing towards a perfection as yet unattained.'3 This conclusion was no doubt inevitable, seeing that each self was already defined as an Absolute.4 But such a heroic multiplication of deities appeals to me rather as a reductio ad absurdum of Dr. McTaggart's doctrine of eternal substances than as calling for further discussion. I doubt if individualism has ever been carried further than in this proposal to have as many universals as there are particulars. But Pluralism is chiefly associated, in recent discussion, with the name of William James. He has made himself the spokesman of the tendency in a special volume of lectures; but all through his work we trace the same reaction against monism' or ' rationalism 'and its' block-universe'. And with James, as we have already partly seen, the Pluralism is uncompromising; it means a 'finite God' and an unfinished world'. He agrees, accordingly, with the writers we have just considered in distinguishing sharply between God and the Absolute, and he invokes the ordinary religious consciousness in support of his position. God" in the religious life of ordinary men is the name not of the 2 Ibid., p. 35. 1 Hegelian Cosmology, p. 34. 6.66 3 Mind, N. S., vol. xi, p. 388 (in a review of Professor Howison's Limits of Evolution). • Descartes had already indicated the conclusion: 'If I were myself the author of my being, anything else would have been easy in comparison; I should have bestowed on myself every perfection of which I possess the idea, and I should thus be God' (Meditations, iii). whole of things, heaven forbid, but only of the ideal tendency in things, believed in as a superhuman person who calls us to co-operate in his purposes, and who furthers ours if they are worthy. He works in an external environment, has limits and has enemies.' And again, 'Monotheism itself, so far as it was religious and not a scheme of classroom instruction for the metaphysician, has always viewed God as but one helper, primus inter pares, in the midst of all the shapers of the great world's fate '.2 James's view is thus the expression of his intense conviction of the reality of the moral struggle, taken together with the conception he has formed of the Absolute as making that struggle unmeaning, and as being in fact the great de-realiser of the only life we are at home in '.3 Hence he transfers the moralistic attitude to the universe as a whole; the course of the world appeals to him as a struggle in which the forces of reason and goodness are at grips with Chaos and old Night. One need only recall the well-known close of the essay 'Is Life worth Living?': 'If this life be not a real fight in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight—as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities. and faithfulnesses, are indeed to redeem. . . . God himself, in short, may draw vital strength and increase of very being from our fidelity. For my own part, I do not know what the sweat and tragedy of this life mean, if they mean anything short of this.' 4 Hence he offers us as a philosophical and religious creed the doctrine of 'meliorism' or 'melioristic theism', as a mean 'between the two extremes of crude Naturalism on the one hand and transcendental Absolutism on the other'; between pessimism and an 1 A Pluralistic Universe, p. 124. 3 A Pluralistic Universe, p. 49. Pragmatism, p. 298. XX JAMES'S MORALISTIC' UNIVERSE 395 optimism 'too saccharine', 'too idyllic' for his taste. The world we know is 'a moralistic and epic kind of universe', the hall-mark of which is progress through effort. Absolutism alone, he admits, can give a sense of security, an assurance, that is to say, of the eventual, or rather of the eternal, triumph of good. But James finds himself willing to take the universe to be really dangerous and adventurous', 'a universe with only a fighting chance of safety'. 'The ordinary moralistic state of mind makes the salvation of the world conditional upon the success with which each unit does its part.' 2 There is no denying the stirring quality of Professor James's philosophy and the appeal it makes to our active nature. But can we hope to find in the characteristics of our own practical activity a description in ultimate terms of the fundamental nature of the universe? James began by appealing to religious usage in support of his view of a struggling deity and a progressing world. But 'moralistic', as we find, is the epithet which he tends on the whole to associate with his doctrine of Meliorism; and he admits that many persons would refuse to call the pluralistic scheme religious at all', reserving that word for the monistic scheme alone. He speaks himself in this sense of religious optimism', and of taking sides for his own part with the more moralistic view', and again he describes his position as 'moralistic religion '.4 Now it has been rightly said that a philosophy may be ultimately tested by its ability to reconcile the attitudes and postulates of morality and religion'; but it is almost a philosophical commonplace that the attitudes and postulates in the two cases are not the same. However it may be with popular religion, the deeper expressions of religious faith and emotion-the utterances of the saints, the religious 1 Pragmatism, chap. viii. Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 526. 3 Pragmatism, p. 293. • Ibid., pp. 295-6, 301. |