Part 12 (2/2)

”a.s.sume that knowing is distinguis.h.i.+ng, and that distinction is of difference; if one knows a difference, one knows it as of ent.i.ties which afford it, and which also he knows; and he must know the ent.i.ties and the difference apart,--one from the other. Knowing all this, he should be able to answer the twin question, 'What is the difference _between sameness and difference_?' It is a 'twin' question, because the two terms are equal in the proposition, and each is full of the other. . . .

”Sameness has 'all the difference in the world'--from difference; and difference is an ent.i.ty as difference--it being identically that. They are alike and different at once, since either is the other when the observer would contrast it with the other; so that the sameness and the difference are 'subjective,' are the property of the observer: his is the 'limit' in their unlimited field. . . .

”We are thus apprized that distinction involves and carries its own ident.i.ty; and that ultimate distinction--distinction in the last a.n.a.lysis--is self-distinction, 'self-knowledge,' as we realize it consciously every day. Knowledge is self-referred: to know is to know that you know, and to be known as well.

”'Ah! but _both in the same time_?' inquires the logician. A subject-object knowing itself as a seamless unit, while yet its two items show a real distinction: this pa.s.ses all understanding.”

But the whole of idealism goes to the proof that the two sides _cannot_ succeed one another in a time-process. ”To say you know, and you know that you know, is to add nothing in the last clause; it is as idle as to say that you lie, and you know that you lie,” for if you know it not you lie not.

Philosophy seeks to grasp totality, ”but the power of grasping or consenting to totality involves the power of thought to make itself its own object. Totality itself may indeed be taken by the _nave_ intellect as an immediate topic, in the sense of being just an _object_, but it cannot be just that; for the knower, as other or opposite, would still be within that totality. The 'universe' by definition must contain all opposition. If distinction should vanish, what would remain? To what other could it change as a whole? How can the loss of distinction make a _difference_? Any loss, at its utmost, offers a new status with the old, but obviously it is too late now to efface distinction by a _change_. There is no possible conjecture, but such as carries with it the subjective that holds it; and when the conjecture is of distinction in general, the subjective fills the void with distinction of itself. The ultimate, ineffaceable distinction is self-distinction, self-consciousness. . . . 'Thou art the unanswered question, couldst see thy proper eye.' . . . The thought that must be is the very thought of our experience; the ultimate opposition, the to be _and_ not to be, is personality, spirit--somewhat that is in knowing that it is, and is nothing else but this knowing in its vast relations.[3]

”Here lies the bed-rock; here the brain-sweat of twenty-five centuries crystallizes to a jewel five words long: 'The Universe has No Opposite.' For there the wonder of that which is, rests safe in the perception that all things _are_ only through the opposition which is their only fear.”

”The inevitable generally,” in short, is exactly and identically that which in point of fact is actually here.

This is the familiar nineteenth-century development of Kant's idealistic vision. To me it sounds monistic enough to charm the monist in me unreservedly. I listen to the felicitously-worded concept-music circling round itself, as on some drowsy summer noon one listens under the pines to the murmuring of leaves and insects, and with as little thought of criticism.

But Mr. Blood strikes a still more vibrant note: ”No more can be than rationally is; and this was always true. There is no reason for what is not; but for what there is reason, that is and ever was. Especially is there no becoming of reason, and hence no reason for becoming, to a sufficient intelligence. In the sufficient intelligence all things always are, and are rational. To say there is something yet to be which never was, not even in the sufficient intelligence wherein the world is rational and not a blind and orphan waif, is to ignore all reason. Aught that might be a.s.sumed as contingently coming to be could only have 'freedom' for its origin; and 'freedom' has not fertility or invention, and is not a reason for any special thing, but the very vacuity of a ground for anything in preference to its room. Neither is there in bare time any principle or originality where anything should come or go. . . .

”Such idealism enures greatly to the dignity and repose of man. No blind fate, prior to what is, shall necessitate that all first be and afterward be known, but knowledge is first, with fate in her own hands.

When we are depressed by the weight and immensity of the immediate, we find in idealism a wondrous consolation. The alien positive, so vast and overwhelming by itself, reduces its pretensions when the whole negative confronts it on our side.[4] It matters little for its greatness when an equal greatness is opposed. When one remembers that the balance and motion of the planets are so delicate that the momentary scowl of an eclipse may fill the heavens with tempest, and even affect the very bowels of the earth--when we see a balloon, that carries perhaps a thousand pounds, leap up a hundred feet at the discharge of a sheet of note paper--or feel it stand deathly still in a hurricane, because it goes with the hurricane, sides with it, and ignores the rus.h.i.+ng world below--we should realize that one t.i.ttle of pure originality would outweigh this cra.s.s objective, and turn these vast ma.s.ses into mere breath and tissue-paper show.” [5]

But whose is the originality? There is nothing in what I am treating as this phase of our author's thought to separate it from the old-fas.h.i.+oned rationalism. There must be a reason for every fact; and so much reason, so fact. The reason is always the whole foil and background and negation of the fact, the whole remainder of reality.

”A man may feel good only by feeling better. . . . Pleasure is ever in the company and contrast of pain; for instance, in thirsting and drinking, the pleasure of the one is the exact measure of the pain of the other, and they cease precisely together--otherwise the patient would drink more. The black and yellow gonfalon of Lucifer is indispensable in any spiritual picture.” Thus do truth's two components seem to balance, vibrating across the centre of indifference; ”being and non-being have equal value and cost,” and ”mainly are convertible in their terms.” [6]

This sounds radically monistic; and monistic also is the first account of the Ether-revelation, in which we read that ”thenceforth each is all, in G.o.d. . . . The One remains, the many change and pa.s.s; and every one of us is the One that remains.”

II

It seems to me that any transcendental idealist who reads this article ought to discern in the fragmentary utterances which I have quoted thus far, the note of what he considers the truer dialectic profundity. He ought to extend the glad hand of fellows.h.i.+p to Mr. Blood; and if he finds him afterwards palavering with the enemy, he ought to count him, not as a simple ignoramus or Philistine, but as a renegade and relapse.

He cannot possibly be treated as one who sins because he never has known better, or as one who walks in darkness because he is congenitally blind.

Well, Mr. Blood, explain it as one may, does turn towards the darkness as if he had never seen the light. Just listen for a moment to such irrationalist deliverances on his part as these:--

”Reason is neither the first nor the last word in this world. Reason is an equation; it gives but a pound for a pound. Nature is excess; she is evermore, without cost or explanation.

'Is heaven so poor that _justice_ Metes the bounty of the skies?

So poor that every blessing Fills the debit of a cost?

That all process is returning?

And all gain is of the lost?'

Go back into reason, and you come at last to fact, nothing more--a given-ness, a something to wonder at and yet admit, like your own will.

And all these tricks for logicizing originality, self-relation, absolute process, subjective contradiction, will wither in the breath of the mystical tact; they will swirl down the corridors before the besom of the everlasting Yea.”

Or again: ”The monistic notion of a oneness, a centred wholeness, ultimate purpose, or climacteric result of the world, has wholly given way. Thought evolves no longer a centred whole, a One, but rather a numberless many, adjust it how we will.”

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