# The Philosophical Review/Volume 4/Number 5/The Absolute and the Time-Process

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THE ABSOLUTE AND THE TIME-PROCESS. II.
In a former article an attempt was made to show (1) that there can be no absolute opposition between reality as it is in itself and reality as it is for thought, and (2) that the exclusion of reality from the time-process converts the time-process into an illusion, while at the same time it makes reality itself unthinkable, and therefore unreal. In support of the former proposition it was urged that we cannot, as Mr. Bradley seems to do, separate the ‘what’ from the ‘that,’ and thus oppose the ideal to the real. The ideal is the only real of which we can have any knowledge; in other words, reality is constituted for us in the continuous process by which it is determined as a thought reality. Judgment we must conceive, not as broken up into separate judgments, but as a single living self-conscious process, in which the real constitution of the world is revealed in its differentiation and integration.
To this view an objection may be raised, which may be dealt with here. It was admitted that the reality which is thought by us, and which alone we know, is not reality in its completeness, i.e., reality in the fullness of its detail; and it may obviously be objected that, since our knowledge is not complete, we have no guarantee that a further extension of knowledge would be in harmony with what we at present affirm to be reality. In answer to this objection I have already suggested that it ultimately rests upon the assumption that reality may be unintelligible, or, what is the same thing at bottom, that our intelligence may be incompetent to grasp reality. Such an assumption seems to me to be self-contradictory, since the only basis upon which it can be claimed that reality may be in its ultimate nature unintelligible must be that very intelligence the impotence of which is virtually assumed. To this general ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/503 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/504 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/505 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/506 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/507 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/508 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/509 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/510 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/511 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/512 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/513 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/514 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/515 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/516 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/517 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/518 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/519 ​Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/520 ​of personality is inadequate even when applied to man, for it is not true that man is merely a person. The first consciousness of exclusive or adverse relations to others must be supplemented by the conception of man as essentially spirit, that is, as a being whose true self is found in what is not self. Man is therefore not adequately conceived as an exclusive self, but only as a self whose true nature is to transcend his exclusiveness and to find himself in what seems at first to be opposed to him. In other words, man is essentially self-separative: he must go out of his apparently self-centred life in order to find himself in a truer and richer life. This conception of a opposing subject must be applied to the Absolute. The Absolute is not an abstract Person, but a Spirit, i.e., a being whose essential nature consists in opposing to itself beings in unity with whom it realizes itself. This conception of a self-alienating or self-distinguishing subject is the fundamental idea which is expressed in an inadequate way in the doctrine of the Trinity. We can conceive nothing higher than a self-conscious subject, who, in the infinite fullness of his nature, exhibits his perfection in beings who realize themselves in identification with Him. What Schiller expresses in a figurative way seems to me to be the necessary result of philosophy:
    “Freundlos war der grosse Weltenmeister,
    Fühlte Mangel, darum schuf er Geister,
    Sel’ge Spiegel seiner Seligkeit.
    Fand das höchste Wesen schon kein Gleiches,
    Aus dem Kelch des ganzen Wesenreiches
    Schäumt ihm die Unendlichkeit.”
John Watson.
    University of Queen’s College.